Decolonizing Death
Among the many commitments that have delayed me in posting another newsletter was an obligation to travel to Texas in the middle of January and pay my respects to my grandmother who was dying.
She was a formidable woman. I spent maybe 6 months of my life with her all told, mostly when I was about 10 years old when she moved back to Oregon, where she was born, and then she moved back to Texas within a year or two. She was sharp-tongued, I recall knowing as a child that we had to do what grandma said without arguing. As an adult I spoke to her on the phone maybe 5 times, and I saw her twice - once when my dad was very ill, and once when she was dying. I went to Texas because she came to us when we were grieving and thought our dad would die, and I owed it to her. But I felt uncertain whether I went to Texas for my own grieving.
I have never known how to feel or act, or what to do when someone dies. In Texas, I sat in the ICU with my aunt and uncle, their spouses and children, wondering what I was supposed to be doing. I had brought along A Map to the Next World by Joy Harjo, and sometimes I read it quietly, sometimes I read it out loud to her. I drew a few pictures. I asked my relatives about their life with the woman who gave me a quarter of my genes - the strongest ones, the whole family looks like her - but who I didn’t really know. Somewhere in the silent, solemn hours, I thought: is this one of the things that Western Civilization has taken from me? The knowledge of how to exist in the presence of death?
When my other grandmother died, it was the middle of COVID, and we didn’t have any kind of gathering. We talked about doing it eventually, but eventually never came. Sometimes missing her sneaks up and overtakes me like a tidal wave. I think I never properly mourned her, and now I’ve spent years having that un-resolved mourning force itself on me. I know that’s an experience shared by plenty of people who have lost someone, even with a proper funeral, but it feels like what might have been fond memories of our time together are tangled up with guilt because I never gave her what she deserved - a proper send off. Perhaps if she or I or my mom belonged to a church, there might have been more hands to help make a belated memorial happen - but it’s just me and my mom, and we remember her together, privately, at most holidays.
I don’t know what my Lakota ancestors’ funeral rites looked like, or whether my living Lakota relatives practice burial or cremation; with ceremonial objects or with nothing; how they might ritualize mourning. Those are often difficult things to learn about in a culture (American) that treats death as a taboo subject. So without a map, I sat quietly in a hospital room, reading and drawing, and asking questions. I asked about her beliefs; what my relatives knew about her death wishes; and what we would do if it was us. I tried to help the people closest to her find their way to peace using the clumsy tools I had at my disposal - a cobbled together assemblage of death traditions I might have come across in books or movies, but never really understood.
I never really felt like any tradition belonged to me until I heard about a what my Lakota ancestors called The Great Mystery. I don’t know if I believe that a specific Lakota spirituality is a core part of me the same way board straight hair or unusual height are, coded in my biology. But I heard that myth, and it felt like I finally had a name for the being I had always felt connected to. A God which does not have to have a face like mine, which I am comfortable not understanding. But when I sit quietly watching a beautiful sunset or my sleeping daughter, I feel wrapped up in it. In that spiritual tradition, I don’t know where I go when I die. But I know that matter is neither created nor destroyed, so my matter will go somewhere, and that experience will belong to someone else’s story. Probably many someone else’s stories.
The more people I’ve lost, the more it feels like a death tradition has also been lost to assimilation. I want them back. I want to know that when my loved ones die, there are a defined series of steps from one side of the veil to the other. When my hands feel impatient, are there shrouds to wrap or meals to prepare? Are there songs to sing even if my voice cracks? Are there prayers to re-memorize for this occasion? I want to be able to walk these steps as easily as I roll out of bed in the morning, make coffee and put on my clothes, with a known destination in mind. That isn’t to say grieving will ever be easy, I’m sure it won’t - just that a death practice rooted in generations of culture might help answer the question I have been dying to know the answer to every time a loved one in my life passes: what do I do?
Death Culture Restoration
Cultures all over the world have death rituals, most of them are wrapped up in religion. Some are quiet, others are raucous. In Georgia I saw a death vigil that lasted 3 days with an open casket, family members taking turns crying with the body. A child died in my high school and I recall an overwhelming Catholic memorial service in a full church. A great uncle of mine had a veteran’s funeral with three guns, which required 7 rounds of shots from 3 gunmen for a 21-gun salute. I have worked with a tribe where they cancel most government meetings and events whenever a Tribal Member has died and their body is still above ground, typically for 2 or 3 days. I used to find that irritating because I couldn’t get work done - but what is the point of work if, when you die, nobody thinks it’s worth taking 2 days to reflect what you had to contribute? Now I think of slowing down for 2 or 3 days as a reasonable sacrifice by the living to celebrate a whole life.
Religion has been on the ebb in the US since WWII, with a dramatic drop off since the 1990’s. I was raised atheist with a few curious peeks into churches and temples throughout my life, but nothing that ever really struck me as believable. My ancestors are Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Lakota, and Atheist, but Atheism doesn’t come with a guide to the end of life. While I finally found my way to the Great Mystery, I still haven’t been able to figure out what that means for the end of my life. Who in my life would cut their hair for me? My husband who wears his buzzed? Would my loved ones be able to find sweetgrass braids? Ultimately these are questions someone else will have to answer. But I think about it, because I know they would do their best to honor my wishes, so eventually I need to tell them what those wishes are.
Based on such a varied experience, and a varied history in myself with Lakota, German, English and Portuguese ancestors, restoring death rituals leaves me wondering which one to restore. When my ancestors assimilated to settler colonial capitalism, all I seem to have inherited is a ritual silence in hospital ICUs. Maybe this is a question to answer in a setting like a Death Cafe where a community can reflect on diverse experiences, and decide what fits each of us best.
Death Doulas are a rising trend over the past decade, and I think this is a response to the recognition that the traditions of colonizer are insufficient for healthy minds of people who experience death - which is all of us, eventually. The organization International End of Life Doulas Association (INELDA) is just now celebrating its first decade. The Death Cafes movement is generating new spaces for open discussions about how we navigate death.
The colonizer mindset puts a deadline on grief based on your employer’s needs - the time when you have to get back to work, because you don’t have any more leave accrued, and your work tasks need to get done. In the past, re-establishing a culture of grieving has not been a priority for most people, until the moment that it is. Decolonizing death is a process of figuring out how to make more space for death, and how to reconstruct death practices from splintered family histories and cultural practices that have been de-prioritized by capitalism. It’s about putting our humanity before our productivity. The pause at the end of life is how we reconcile what we have lost with what we still have of our loved ones to carry into the future.
Resources
If you are seeking companionship while you reflect on this inevitable journey, consider joining (or starting) a local Death Cafe. Although there is extensive literature on death scattered across the entirety of recorded human history, I’ll share some recommendations of artists I love who have deeply explored death and dying:
- Joy Harjo
- Frida Kahlo
- Carvaggio
- Alok Menon
- Mary Roach
- Atul Gawande
- Caitlin Doughty
Know Your Rights:
Burial Practices
Burial laws vary greatly state-to-state, and are governed by only a few Federal standards, such as the FTC laws about Funeral Home qualifications; the CDC’s public health requirements about the importation of human remains from abroad; and ARPA and NAGPRA about the handling of Native American graves, ancestors, and cultural artifacts. Virtually everything else is dictated by your state.
In Oregon, as in most states, burial and cremation are the most common ways people have their remains disposed of. In the US,
cremation surpassed burial in the late 20th century, and today cremation is used around 62% of the time, while traditional burial is used about 31% of the time (CANA, 2026). The remaining 7% is mostly made up of anatomical donation; above-ground burial (mausoleums); and green/natural burial. Some alternatives are emerging but very rarely used, including aquamation (like cremation but more sustainable), human composting, and cryonics (freezing). All of these alternatives are legal in Oregon, but facilities offering them are rare. Burial at home is legal, but regulated by states and counties.
Oregon legalized natural burial without embalming in 2021, and today four Oregon cemeteries allow this option:
- The Forest Conservation Burial Ground (Ashland)
- Great River Natural Burial (Mosier)
- River View Cemetery (Portland)
- Sunset Hills Memorial Park (Eugene)
Some traditional cultural practices remain illegal in most of the US, and in Oregon. Zoroastrian and Vajrayana Buddhist sky burial, where remains are left for scavengers, is not legal anywhere in the US except for Colorado in a single, tightly regulated facility which serves the religious groups for whom sky burial is a cultural norm. The deeply misunderstood practice of Endocannibalism, or eating the dead, is not legal in the US due to strong European cultural taboo. This is often expressed as a public health concern, although in traditions like the Amahuaca (South America), the matter consumed is the ash after a body has been cremated, which has essentially zero chance of transmitting pathogens. The disposition of human remains is mostly regulated because we have such strong feelings about them, our death wishes inherently rely on trusting that our family and our culture understands and respects our wishes.
If your preferred method is not legal in your state, you may consider working to make it legal by lobbying or writing a ballot measure to legalize alternative burials.
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