“Your Ancestors Are Never Farther Away Than the Length of Your Arm”
~ Angaangaq, Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder
For the first few months of doing serious Ancestor work several years ago, before I began to understand what I was learning, I had problems with “The List” of fancy Ancestors. 
(This work was easier for me than many, since one of my great-grandmother’s younger sisters had published a well-known reference book, Register of Maryland’s Heraldic Families, in 1935. Royalty in one’s lineage makes for accurate genealogy: everybody knew who was who, since so much depended on it — from political alliances to marriage to money and power to whose heads stayed attached to their necks.)
“How am I supposed to honor these people who carved out the history of Europe with their swords,” I’d frown, “when I have a grassroots Heart and know that it’s wrong to kill?”
One day sitting with names of maternal Ancestors in Scotland, I said aloud to the computer, “This is all very well, but I want to know about the original Scots, the indigenous Scots, the ones who were there before there were kings and queens, thank you very much!”
Somehow, I had never heard of the Picts. A simple search lit up the screen, and I clicked on a site about a third of the way down the page. As the site opened, I heard myself laughing a laugh I’d never heard before, in a man’s voice unfamiliar to me. Three pages in was this:
Ancient Druid Prayer
All the gods are one god,
All the goddesses are one goddess,
All the faiths are one faith,
All things are interconnected,
And Truth is whole.
That was the first of several head-spinning experiences that tell me Angaangaq is right. Every time you look into a mirror, you’re looking into your Ancestors’ eyes, and they’re looking back into yours.
~ Worth Cooley-Prost
Finish Your Story 