Greeting kinfolk. I’m a 76-year-old African American woman who grew up during the civil rights, anti-war and women’s liberation struggles of the 1960’s. I live in Huichin, the unceded territory of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, aka Oakland California. For twenty years I worked as an inner-city midwife delivering the babies of women from over 70 countries. Many of them were immigrants, war refugees or survivors of sexual abuse. Each woman, even those addicted to drugs, was embedded in a particular culture, spirituality, family, and community. Each came to me with a powerful story of struggle and hope – and I tried to serve and honor them in the best way possible. Today, I view myself as a woman of compassion and spirit, who holds and tells the stories of women from diverse communities, countries, and ethnicities through speaking, writing, and dance.
One of my friends and compañeras, Angelina Bourbon, is a comadre, community health worker, Registered Nurse, and author, who studied with Indigenous elders. In the multicultural health trainings she gave, Angelina spoke about the “Three ‘R’s”: relationship, respect, and reciprocity. She taught that the Indigenous world view recognized that there were many entities in the world beside those that were human. We were in relationship not only to other people, but to the natural forces of the world, including: the sun, the rain, and the rivers; our plant and animal kin; and the mountains, trees, and landscapes which all support human life. Each living entity was worthy of respect – and our relationship with them was governed by the concept of reciprocity: what we offer or give to others, comes back to affect us.
I believe these concepts are alive today. Many of our Indigenous ancestors created ceremonies and rituals that sought to establish harmony and balance between the elemental forces of nature, and the human beings dependent on these forces. They saw themselves as relatives of our other-than-human kin, and they understood that if we polluted the waters, or overhunted fish and game, that we humans would suffer.
I also believe that the values that sustain us come from early beliefs about the sanctity of life. Every one of us descends from peoples who honored women, cherished the children, and cared for the elders. Every one of us is connected to peoples who created rituals to make kin of the stranger, who recognized the Two-Spirit/s, the disabled, and the different – and found a place for their skills and talents.
These beliefs exist in our modern religions. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is an important part of the Christian tradition. It’s foundational to the concept of the “beloved community” envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In that community, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or economic status, we are equally worthy – and deserve the rights, dignity, and resources that enable us to survive and flourish.
Like Dr. King, Liberation Theology, which developed in Latin America, proposed that God was a God of justice, who wanted all people to be free of political, economic and social oppression. Offering alms to the poor is one of Islam’s Five Pillars – and in Judaism, one is encouraged to engage with “tikkun olam”, taking action to repair our fragmented and broken world.
If I want to speak about grounding and alliance-building, I begin with the concept that all of us are kin. Our Indigenous ancestors tell us this; our major religions tell us this, and in our hearts, we know that the work of nurturing and supporting ourselves and our communities is a major part of what enables our survival.
During the Civil Rights movement, Dr. King asked that we separate the evil that people do from the people themselves. He argued that people doing evil could be affected by the spiritual power of love – and that they could grow and change. I saw change during the Civil rights movement, just as I have witnessed change and evolution in my own thinking, over time. Some seemingly die-hard segregationists changed during the Civil Rights era, and some right-wing white supremacists have changed today.
Even our families can change. One of my lesbian sisters said that when research suggested that help with “coming out to their families” was recognized as a top priority for Asian American lesbians, counselors suggested that Asian American lesbians reject white, dominant norms of coming out “loud and proud” to their parents, and give their parents time to change instead. It took 13 years, my friend said, but at the end of that time, her mother sewed both her and her partner’s wedding dresses.
As a midwife who has received babies fresh from the womb, I know that racism is a fallacy for a newborn does not recognize race, or culture, but will grow and thrive in the arms of anyone who loves them. Hatred has to be taught.
However, if we are to truly have meaningful alliances, I believe that we must share our cultures and histories with one another. Accepting and honoring personal and cultural experiences, and traumas is as important as celebrating our commonalities. Oppression affects us all, but we are all differently targeted, and proposed remedies to our oppression may put us in conflict with one another. Recently, a Native American organizer complained because some California communities are giving land back to African Americans whose land was unjustly seized by local governments. That land belongs to local Native communities – and while he sympathized with attempts to redress past wrongs, the current solution continued Native peoples’ oppression.
There are no simple answers, but I know we have to keep talking. We have to work and share, and find the commonalities between all peoples who are oppressed. I close, with some phrases our different peoples developed in recognition of kinship, either to other humans or to all of creation:
“Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ: Lakota: “All my relations”
“Namaste”: Hindu: “The divine in me bows to the divine in you”
“Ubuntu”: Zulu: “I am because you are and because you are I am”
Arisika Razak, is a 76 year-old elder. She currently teaches at the East Bay Meditation Center, Oakland CA, and formerly was the Chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. For twenty years she served as an inner city midwife in the San Francisco Bay Area, leading to her interest in the cultural practices, healing modalities and spiritual traditions of women of the global South. Her healing practice is exemplified via movement, storytelling, dance and embodied classes supporting the empowerment of women.