Discharging on Historical and Ancestral Events
At a recent Thirty-Five-and-Under Climate Change and Climate Justice Workshop, in Massachusetts, USA, we (Iara Cury, Fialaui’a Lamositele, Julianne Gale, and Aly Halpert) led the land acknowledgement and the work on historical and ancestral events.
Our leader, Iara, is a mixed-heritage Indigenous Brazilian living on Mohican territory. Fialaui’a is a mixed-heritage Indigenous Samoan living on Lummi and Nooksack territory. Julianne is a mixed-heritage Han Chinese and Ashkenazi Jew living on Skokomish/Twana territory. Aly is a white Ashkenazi Jew living on Schaghticoke territory.
Iara: Working on distress recordings handed down to us by previous generations is not only possible but necessary. We need to make sense of our history. We need to face the reality and lingering effects of past survival challenges in order to be able to feel deeply, reclaim our power and purpose, and work toward liberating and sustaining all life.
I encourage people to learn about distressing historical and ancestral events, to have sessions about them in the present tense (as if they are happening or have just ended), and to notice any feelings or thoughts, regardless of how implausible or unbelievable they may seem. Part of “mental health” oppression is to deny that humans pass on feelings and patterns from generation to generation. The reality is that humans are proficient transmitters of culture, knowledge—and feelings.
In RC (and increasingly in the wide world) there is evidence that people carry specific distress recordings related to events from any number of years before their conception. You may be surprised not only at your ability to discharge on historical and ancestral events but also at the intensity of the sessions (if you can counteract internalized “mental health” oppression in the form of self-judgment, disbelief, and discouragement).
Fialaui’a: Many Native/Indigenous communities recognize the soil, the land, the water, the earth that we are on. What follows is a land acknowledgement protocol from my people to your people. It is a daily practice done wherever one goes. You might hear different variations of it from different (Oceanic) Islanders. We’re not all the same. This is our version.
(Land acknowledgement ceremony, led by Fialaui’a)
Iara: We are standing on Wampanoag land. The people are still here. There are a couple of Wampanoag communities on Martha’s Vineyard and on Cape Cod (in Massachusetts, USA). About two thousand people are currently registered as Wampanoag. They are a thriving community and are reviving their language. I encourage you to do some research on that, because it’s inspiring. The language died in the late 1800s, but they have found written records and are reviving the language from them. It’s incredible that people can rescue a language, that they can get it back like that. So we want to thank the Wampanoag and honor them.
Indigenous people, African-heritage people, and Jewish people (and other groups I might not know about) have been working on distress recordings that are hundreds of years old. Today I invite everybody to discharge on what might have been happening to your ancestors five hundred years ago. I think that if we don’t discharge on this, the undischarged hurt creates oppressor material [distress]. (People of European descent generally don’t do this kind of work because it sounds “crazy.”) Have you ever discharged about your ancestors surviving the plague? Or surviving a famine? Or surviving wars? You have no memories of these events, but the distress recordings are in you. That’s something Indigenous people, African-heritage people, and Jewish people know deeply.
I think everybody has recordings from hundreds of years ago, and if you feel “crazy” discharging on them, that’s “mental health” oppression. I think about zombie and apocalypse movies. They show a recording being played over and over again. We can relate to them because we have recordings like that. We just don’t have the actual memories, so it feels confusing. Consider having a session on “everybody died but me or a couple of people.” That certainly happened to some of your ancestors.
We have three different prompts for the mini-session: (1) for people of European descent, (2) for people who have Indigenous ancestors, and (3) for People of the Global Majority who don’t know if they have Indigenous ancestors. You can be creative. What are all the horrible things you think might have happened to your ancestors?
Aly: For people of European descent, “What happened to your people that led them to brutally mistreat and kill Indigenous peoples?” (Hint: horrible things!)
Iara: For Indigenous-heritage people, “What is your connection to your Indigenous roots?” (If you can find each other for the mini-session, that would be helpful. If people targeted by genocide in other ways can find each other, that would be helpful, too.)
Julianne: For non-Indigenous People of the Global Majority, “What domination experiences do you have to discharge on to commit to building strong relationships with Indigenous people?” (Sometimes we are so overwhelmed by racism that we forget to notice that we have oppressor material about Indigenous people.)
Question from an Asian-heritage Co-Counselor: By “domination experiences,” do you mean experiences of being oppressors or of being dominated?
Iara: If you get oppressed and don’t discharge the hurt, you have oppressor distresses, so you can discharge on the oppressed side or on the oppressor side. It’s up to you [you can choose].
(Mini-session)
Hoodsport, Washington and Millerton, New York, USA
(Present Time 198, January 2020)