Decolonizing our Hearts
Atoning by Restoring Mother Earth
Healing for all Creation and all future generations
In solidarity with CA Indigenous
Atonement is what we do to fix relationships fractured by wrongdoing. To atone is, at first pass, to do something to repair this rupture by addressing the source of the rupture, namely the wrongdoing. The end goal is to become one, to be at one, or to reconcile.
“Making amends” is often used to describe what is done to repair the rupture.
Atonement, as a larger construct- includes reparation, moral debt, repentance, moral reformation, sacrifice, forgiveness, restoration. the offense produces a moral rift even if the victim is not aware of the moral rift, for the offender has in fact wronged the victim. That moral injury can be repaired by the wrongdoer repenting of his action, sincerely recognizing the moral worth of the victim, and engaging in moral reformation.
Atoning to the primary victim in a publicly visible way can help one to morally reconcile with others in one’s community.
From Louise Dunlap, author of Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind
While researching my settler-ancestors and the land they took for their own in Northern California, I saw that colonization was far more violent than I had learned in school. Indigenous friends introduced me to the Native American idea of “the soul wound”–the deep and ongoing injury of colonization that affects not just the Original People but also perpetrators and the land itself. The soul wound is intergenerational and cumulative. I believe its effect on the perpetrators–where it is near-totally unrecognized–has led to the challenging environmental and social problems we face today. I have been awed and impressed with the healing underway in many Native communities, but we settler-descendants and beneficiaries of conquest are only beginning to see the painful work needed to heal with integrity from the wounds we also carry. Grief, apology, and repair must begin with the truth of what happened. Indigenous elders have said, “We don’t speak of these things without ceremony.” So, I am grateful for this sanctuary space with you–where we can begin to acknowledge the harm done in our name, reconnect with our true human goodness, and heal together.
“It takes knowing the truth to be set free from the psychic injury caused by wrongdoing” (Volf 2006: 75).
Ancient Wisdom to mend our Broken Hearts and World Rabbi Sharon Brous.docx- practice of communal listening “What happened to you?” -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Practices from Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
The four mountains (collaboration with Cree elder John Crier)
This is a version of a story originally told by a Cree elder named John Crier. The story is about four mountains representing four stages of life. I (Vanessa) first heard this story from John in 2015. The story became very important in a research project that I was also part of, led by another Cree knowledge keeper, Cash Ahenakew. Cash’s project showed examples of how Indigenous education is fundamentally about preparing people, from the day they are born, to become good elders and ancestors for all relations. John has kindly and generously given us permission to travel with this story and to write down this version of it.
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7 steps back and 7 steps forward (or aside)
Trying to bring people together to address local and global challenges, such as climate destabilization or systemic inequalities in times of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity is an enormous challenge in itself. Part of this challenge is that what has worked before in bringing people together is no longer working for many different reasons: reality is much more complex and more materially precarious for most; change is happening fast and differently from before, increasing dissonance between generations; there are more people involved and more diversity at the table, where many different ideas of “forward” compete for a platform (even between and within groups that have historically and systemically been marginalized) and stable authorities and enduring consensus are no longer possible. Another part of the challenge is that what is optimal for the process of learning and unlearning for one group of people can often be triggering and harmful to another and vice versa (with unevenly distributed harms and burdens).
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Co-sensing With Radical Tenderness Deck of Cards
Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness is a collaborative text written by Dani d’Emilia and Vanessa Andreotti, based on the work of the collective Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, of which we are a part. Initially called ‘An Invitation to Radical Tenderness’, this latest version was edited in 2021.