I think you may be confusing smudging with smoke cleansing. Smudging, according to several Indigenous peoples and organizations, is a very specific Native practice that, unless you were raised in the culture or taught by an Elder, you shouldn’t do. This is a form of cultural appropriation and becomes problematic when the Indigenous peoples who want to practice their faith can’t, yet the mass markets are profiting from something that has Native roots.
There is nothing wrong with smoke cleansing, but smudging itself is very specific, and not all Indigenous peoples and tribes practice this ritual. There is also the issue of white sage being overharvested. White Sage is one of the only medicinal plants some Native peoples can use for some of their rituals and ceremonies. According to one of the articles below, the four medicinal plants they use are tobacco, sage, sweetgrass, and cedar. Sage has just become the popular one amongst non-natives. When corporations latch onto something from Native culture that is popular amongst the New Age crowd (i.e. sage bundles and dreamcatchers), it directly harms those tribes by moving money from them and their Native-made crafts and supplies (which will naturally be more expensive) to the corporations that have the money and workforce to mass-produce these items on a larger scale. This creates a problem because then the herbs used are mass-produced and harvested, causing ecological issues as well as financial ones.
This is a Canadian article but still helpful, in my opinion.
These are guidelines for a work environment, but still helpful as it is from a Native voice.
Here’s a quote from this article.
So when non-native people burn sage to “smudge” their homes or other spaces, it can minimize the cultural importance of this ritual, and have a negative impact on how the herbs are grown.
And here is a definition of cultural appropriation, for good measure.
“Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It’s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects.” - Source
I’m not trying to diminish your experience or your husbands with smudging and smoke cleansing. What I am trying to say is that enough Indigenous people have spoken out against non-natives using White Sage and smudging because of the way it directly impacts them. It doesn’t hurt us to listen to them and find alternatives, especially when the continued use and propagation of white sage directly harms their communities.