How race and racism have disconnected us from ourselves, one another, and our Mother Earth.
EXCERPT FROM PANEL PRESENTATION “NARRATIVE CHANGING CURRICULUM” AT 2019 TRUTH, RACIAL HEALING & TRANSFORMATION INSTITUTE; VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, PA.
Questions for consideration as you read this piece:
- What unhealthy systems might you be entangled in?
- What are the ways that these unhealthy systems shape and harm you? Your ancestors? Your grandchildren?
- How has race and racism disconnected you from your roles and responsibilities to yourself, to one another, and to the places you are descended from?
“I’m going to share a story about my family’s history to help illustrate the ways that we have all been disconnected from our indigenous places & the ancestral knowledge systems that are rooted in racism. Dr. (Gail) Christopher reminded us on the first day that we all descend from a common human ancestor, and that science tells us that there is no such thing as race (i.e. race has no genetic basis).
What is also true, is that we are all descended from peoples who successfully adapted to survive in response to the biophysical conditions of very specific places around the world.
If these experiments in survival were successful, our ancestors learned how to thrive & flourish within the biophysical limits of these different places — and then over time, developed the rich tapestry of cultural traditions into which were encoded sophisticated knowledge systems that successfully transfer this ancestral knowledge over many generations.
For example, on my Mom’s side, I am a 4th generation descendant of plantation workers who migrated to Hawaiʻi from the Philippines in search of a better life. Filipinos themselves have endured multiple waves of colonization, occupation and exploitation by China, Portugal, Spain and the United States that has severed the original peoples of these islands from indigenous ancestral knowledge systems developed in response to the biophysical parameters of their specific places.
(side note: In the 10th C, the Philippine island of Mindoro was known by the Chinese as Ma-i, which means “country of the Blacks”).
Q: Does anyone know where the name “Philippines” comes from?
A: “Las islas Felipinas” the name given to it in by the Spanish Explorer Ruy López de Villalobos in 1543, honoring the Prince Philip II of Spain.
On my Dad’s side — I am descended from Irishmen and Scottsmen who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands by the occupying forces of the British Empire (presumably for committing some petty crime in their struggle to subsist and persist), and shipped to Terra Australis (Australia) as convicts to serve in the labor camps of the British colonies established on the indigenous lands of the Aboriginal people of the Australian continent - a peoples who are heirs to over 40,000 years of indigenous ancestral knowledge systems of places throughout this vast continent:
I come from a long line of peoples in displacement.
I have been severed from the places and indigenous ancestral knowledge systems that I am descended from, and my entire family carries unresolved intergenerational trauma which express itself in ways that we are likely not even aware of. Our complex histories — the non-dominant narratives we hold — reveal the unhealthy systems we are entangled in which shape us every day.
Today, through the relationship I cultivate with Hawaiʻi (the place that has nourished and shaped me and my family the most) I am able to begin healing from the intergenerational traumas that I carry from this entanglement by committing to be in an active relationship with the islands, its people, and our common ancestors → a relationship that (like any healthy relationship) carries with it, its own unique privileges and responsibilities to each other.
We are all entangled in unhealthy systems that are rooted in the “othering” of ourselves — racism — by a small group of men convened by Emperor Constantine around 300AD in Europe, who conspire to expand their own power & control over the natural world through a consciously designed & strategically executed system of disconnecting of peoples from place. This leads to the enslavement of peoples in service to the exploitation of the natural world to further expand these power and control structures — the roots of capitalism.
The exploitation of the natural world in the name of supporting the constantly expanding global economic paradigm of never-ending growth — that is, the industrial extraction of our true sources of wealth (the living world, the non-living world, our physical, emotional, social and spiritual health) in service to the relentless pursuit of the accumulation material wealth as measured and facilitated by fiat currency systems — the root cause of the climate crisis.
We are all entangled in unhealthy systems that are rooted in the “othering” of ourselves — racsim.
Naming these unhealthy systems, so that we can perceive these systems, gives us increased agency (and compassion) to extract ourselves from these systems and begin the work of healing ourselves, so that we can care for each other and care for the places which nourish, protect and provide for us.”
— Matthew K Lynch, speech at Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Institute hosted by Association of American Colleges & Universities;
June 25, 2019 to June 28, 2019
@Villanova University
POSTSCRIPT: PALE BLUE DOT
“We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there — on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light . . .
To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
— Carl Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994
