Matriarchy

 I watched a show tonight on Facebook about the Orca Killer Whales of the West Coast.  I learned that the pods are led by grandmother's and knowledge is passed from the grandmothers and mothers to the pods.  I also learned that different pods have different languages.  Or different dialects.  Each pod can tell that the other pods are speaking but they cannot understand the language.

This is so like what I have learned about trees.  Trees have networks that communicate through their roots.  And it is the grandmother trees that pass their knowledge down from generation to generation.  

This seems to be true of indigenous people everywhere, as far as I can tell from my readings.  It seems to me a particular curse of white supremacy that the nuclear family is apparently worshiped, and age is not seen as a crowning achievement but as an affront to youth.  

More on these things as they develop in my mind.

Focus on a New Direction.

 

So cool! There was a webinar for old Gaelic names of Armagh, a county in Ireland....I got to listen to an older gentleman (who was definitely Irish) show his charts and talk about the history of a whole slew of names....some going back to 937AD!!!! It amazes me! I hope they remember to send me their line up of events....I will spend time on a webinar any time I can to get to listen to an Irish brogue for an hour!

4/21/2021

 

I just finished watching for the third or fourth time a documentary on indigenous people throughout the globe and the work to save nature from greed. So I realized at least two things as I watched The Condor and the Eagle.....it seems to be that it is only white settler colonial peoples who exalt independence and self sufficiency. When I look around, figuratively speaking, at the world....it seems like every people group that is not white European or white North American, which is everybody else....that all of the others that are left, which are the indigenous peoples of all nations, understand that we are better in community and in interdependence. So then the next thing that came to me is this: where in the world did white people come from? Are we (I must claim my white Northern European American identity) the only people that are not indigenous somewhere? And if so.....how did that happen? Perhaps white northern Europeans are indigenous to Scandinavia? I would say the colder the climate the whiter the skin except Alaska is cold, as are the northern stretches of Canada, and there are native populations living in both of those places....so that rather kills that argument/thought.

4/21/2021

 

5/21/2021

I am going to confess that I had no idea how long it had been since I had written on this blog.  I think that it tells me how much my pandemic life more or less fell apart.  Hope to become more consistent.  Blessings, Debbie

The Journey now includes learning about systemic racism, poverty, colonialism and climate change.

 

New blog entry. 

9/13/2020

 

Okay.  I have decided that for now this blog will have a new focus.  I am learning about systemic racism and poverty, colonialism and even climate change and how all of these things are interwoven with each other.  I am also learning about antiracism.  I will share this journey in this blog and you are welcome to join me if you like.

 

In reading and in “attending” numerous webinars I have discovered some new ways that I am looking at the United States, North and South America, and even Europe.  Just this minute, as I started typing on this subject,  I realized that I must put in a disclaimer.  I am continuing to learn and I recognize that I am totally a student in these matters.  I also understand that teaching is something that appears to come naturally to me in the sense that it is something I enjoy very much.  I suppose that I can be both a student and a teacher at the same time, however,  I must emphasize that as I am still learning, I may need to make corrections to what I write.  As I make new, or different discoveries, I will do my best to share those with you and make my best attempt to share what has been corrected. 

 

 

In the United States the currently dominant people group is white, caucasion, of European descent.  This is how this group of people seems to be defined in questions on all kinds of forms these days.  As the Han are dominant in China….so it goes.  It seems to me that the dominant people groups in a country are usually descendants from the people that invaded a country in the past.  This would mean that people who were colonizers in the past, settled in the country that had been invaded, and grew in population size to become a larger group than the original inhabitants.

 

In the North American United States of America (also known as Turtle Island by indigenous people) we have Native Americans who were the first people on this continent as far as I have read.  Christopher Columbus thought that he had found India (he was way lost) and named the people he found here Indians…..but that really is not a correct name.  Indians are from India. 

 

Then we have black Americans, currently known as African Americans.  Primarily these are descendants of enslaved people that were taken by force, and without choice, from the continent of Africa, starting about 400 years ago.  They were brought to the Eastern shores of the North American continent and also taken to many other places along the way.  When I taught Theology and Bible at the Nile Theological College in Sudan and South Sudan I had students ask me why there are black people in Haiti.  I really dislike having to explain about the colonial and enslaving history of the United States to other people.  It causes me to be ashamed.  And I was.  However, those students launched me on the path of finding out more about migration, colonialism, etc.  Students are wonderful sources of questions that open up new vistas for learning.  Like the students in China who asked me why the United States was involved in the Vietnam war.  That too was an embarrassing one….

 

At any rate, we have 1.  Native Americans, 2.  African Americans, descendants of enslaved Africans and 3.  The group of people who are white, of European descent and thus descendants of the original colonizers of most of this country.  We also have 4. immigrants from other countries, and 5. refugees from other countries.  6. As well, as the United States expanded her territory to create a land from sea to shining sea, there was land that was appropriated from Mexico.  As it turns out I have read now about how Mexicans and “Americans” moved back and forth freely over the U.S. southern border for a long time because they had been doing that already for many years.  Until that changed.

 

I trust that as I go along in this learning journey I will learn more about people groups that live in the United States, and the reasons that they do.  I am going to stop here for now as this is long enough for a first entry.

Blessings,

Debbie

 

A Hurricane Katrina memory.

 15 years ago I was staying for three months at a guest house in East Jerusalem on the grounds of a hospital that served a Palestinian population. Everyday I saw Muslim women dressed in abayas and everyday I ate green olives in the hospital cafeteria. I was there with an international group as an EAPPI. Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel. I know this because I remember watching the news about Hurricane Katrina on the television with the other people in the group. I was horrified, gripped with sorrow and also mortified because this tragedy was occurring in my country; the country that at that time people looked up to. It is hard to have the failings of ones country splashed across the television set when one is with a group of people from all over the world. Now we've been living that for well over three years

Grief.

I think I am possibly moving a little bit beyond denial and for this moment am understanding that life is not going to unfold as what I had envisioned at one point. I think I am also realizing that this is a grieving process, and it is not 😓going to be linear.

I am "getting" it. This virus has changed life as we know it. This is a grieving process and is not linear.😓

July 1, 2020 Ruminating

Three countries are on my mind. Sudan. A very sleepy me listened to a webinar on Sudan early this morning. Sudan needs international help. Now that the dictator Omar El Bashir is gone Sudan is hopeful that the designation of a terrorist country can be removed. Hong Kong. My heart aches for these people who are experiencing the loss of freedom. I am grateful that the United Kingdom is offering citizenship to those that are eligible. Taiwan is offering shelter, however, Taiwan might not be the wisest choice considering their close proximity to China and the relationship between the two. Palestine. With illegal support from 45 in the white house Israel is planning to jump on annexing up to 30% of Palestinian land. This is against International Law and the Geneva Conventions. From the beginning of this modern day and secular Israel the idea of having the country spread from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River has been a blueprint that was closely held by the leadership of Israel. Over the years since the 1948 al-Nakba, "the disaster," Israel has swallowed more and more land that diminishes the Palestinian children of God that live there. 45 is not the first of the problem, he is a disastrous latest piece that is causing Netanyahu to take bold steps in stealing land just in case 45 is not re-elected in November. One of the principle issues with the United States is that "we" consistently veto in the United Nations the steps that the rest of the global community would like to take. Stopping Israel in its tracks. Today is the day that the particular evil of annexation is slated to begin.

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Book review of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

t feels like it has taken me months to slog through this book.. What I find hard to believe is that I finished it yesterday, Sunday May 31, 2020. There was an excellent Inside Story on AlJazeera yesterday which I watched twice to make sure I had actually heard things right. I had just finished a book that spent an amazing amount of time on the War on Drugs, the incarceration of young black men and a culture of racism in police departments. The female speaker talked about police departments and need for change in the culture in them. And protests around the United States were/are turning violent and the anger is continuing.....in response to the death of a young black man who was murdered by white cops. I am quite sure I have never had the timing of a book coincide so perfectly with current events.
It has taken me so long to read it because it is hard to read. Not reading comprehension. This has more to do with the subject matter. It connected with some of the recent books I have read. Democracy in Chains, Waking up White are two that come immediately to mind. Oh yes, and The Color of the Law.
Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow, shares that incarceration is the New Jim Crow because it continues to be a system that controls young black men and disenfranchises them for their entire lives. African Americans have been in prison for 400 years, since the ancestors of those who are alive now were dragged from Africa to North America. The name of the prison has changed is all. First it was slavery, after at least two reinventions of itself, a racialized form of control, it is now the prison system.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who has thought about "prison reform". Really, for anyone. To get through all of it requires some commitment. (less)