Sage's first article already separates culinary Salvia officinalis from the white sage, Salvia apiana, sold as a smudge stick, and states plainly that Native nations object to the commercial sale of the ceremonial version. That objection deserves its own space rather than a closing caveat, because it is the single most contested fact attached to any incense on this site.
The objection is specific, not general. It is not that burning plants for cleansing is wrong, since the practice is close to universal, but that bundled white sage smudging is a ceremony belonging to particular Indigenous peoples of California and the Southwest, and selling it stripped of that context, to buyers with no relationship to the land or the communities it comes from, is described by Native scholars and by several of those nations as dispossession rather than tribute. Wild stands of Salvia apiana are documented as being stripped by commercial harvesters meeting demand created by exactly this market.
This is a live, current position held by living communities, not a historical grievance being revisited. It is presented on this site as such, rather than resolved one way or the other, because it is not this atlas's place to settle it.
Common sage, Salvia officinalis, carries none of this. As a European culinary and medicinal strewing herb, its Latin name, from the verb "to save," reflects an ordinary household reputation for healing rather than any contested ceremony.