Education, Colonial Sickness: A Decolonial African Indigenous Project 3031402626, 9783031402623

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Education, Colonial Sickness

A Decolonial African Indigenous Project Edited by  Njoki Nathani Wane

Education, Colonial Sickness

Njoki Nathani Wane Editor

Education, Colonial Sickness A Decolonial African Indigenous Project

Editor Njoki Nathani Wane Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto Ontario, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-031-40261-6    ISBN 978-3-031-40262-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Anastasiia Kulikovska / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

I dedicate this book to all the knowledge keepers and knowledge seekers. I would also like to dedicate this book to Leonard Wandili who transitioned to the spirit world before the book was submitted to the publishers.

Foreword

This remarkable book details how people of African ancestry have endured the painful effects of colonial exploitation and subsequent loss of their languages, cultures, medicines, foods, spirituality, systems of governance, indigenous economics, and even their educational systems. However, despite this bleak reality, this book represents hope. In this book, the authors take us on a transformative journey of healing, reclaiming, excavating, extracting, and reassembling the pieces of our Africanness. They recreate our story by focusing on various areas of study, while affirming that although we have suffered immense damage, all is not lost. Whether excavating the troubling echoes of our past or examining the complexity of our present, they offer words that address the psychological and spiritual injuries inflicted upon us and suggest a way to a future of dignity. The authors of this book shed light on the multifaceted dimensions of decolonizing work, emphasizing its structural, epistemic, personal, and relational aspects. They provide critical insights and propose alternative ways of knowing, challenging unjust practices, assumptions, and institutions. In their telling, the importance and urgency of acting and dismantling colonial structures becomes imperative. Most importantly, this work serves as reminder: the concept of decolonization extends beyond the removal of colonial symbols from university campuses. The authors call for an Afrocentric shaping of academic knowledge and expertise and suggest that we can do this through critical scholarship, theoretical inquiry, and empirical research. To demonstrate this, the writers challenge, rectify, and critically examine the interplay between vii

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knowledge and power, and ably dismantle existing hierarchies, while at the same time, strive for mutual understanding and plurality. I am grateful for this timely work and sincerely believe, as the authors do, that the journey toward decolonization requires a reevaluation of African Studies, embracing an Afrocentric multidisciplinary approach that resists systems of oppression. Our efforts must be directed toward reclaiming African subjectivity, questioning Euro-North American-centric epistemologies and rejecting Euro-centric narratives. This book is therefore crucial for the sake of our future generations, as it will indeed enable them to know who they are and where they come from. Lusaka, Zambia

Mulenga Kapwepwe

Preface

Colonization has left deep and lasting wounds on our spirits. Our minds have become prisoners, trapped by an assumed notion of “normality.” This “normal” has turned us into outliers, made to feel as though we should be ashamed of our very essence. Throughout the harrowing years of colonization, we’ve been taught to devalue our dignity. Mainstream media often portrayed an inferior version of us, and we were led to believe that this distorted representation truly defined us. We were conditioned to accept a notion of our own inferiority, which has silently bred shame within our cores. Now, burdened with this self-doubt, we strive to align ourselves with Eurocentric ideals, as if they are the gold standard. It’s as though our rich cultures, civilizations, traditions, and histories pre-­ colonization never existed. As if civilization itself was a gift handed down by colonizers! Mentioning the shame we harbor is met with further shame. It’s a vicious cycle that forces us into silent suffering, isolated with our colonially imprinted thoughts. The colonization of our lands wasn’t just a physical invasion, but also a psychological one. It permeated our minds, our self-­ perception, and our shared sense of identity. Remaining silent and not confronting these feelings only serves to perpetuate a legacy of internalized inferiority. To heal and reestablish our pride, we must shatter this silence, challenging both the external narratives thrust upon us and the internal voices that hinder our progress. The book Colonial Sickness is here to shatter that silence, guiding us on a transformative journey toward healing. It’s not just a beacon but a balm, aiding us in unlearning the deep-­ seated shame and various other maladies stemming from colonialism. It ix

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teaches us that there’s inherently nothing wrong with us. While we have patterns to unlearn and wounds to heal, at the core of our being, we remain untouched and whole. This book seeks to help us unlearn generations of harm, offering African-centric educational recommendations as pathways to healing. Above all, it beckons us to remember and embrace love—to wholly love ourselves, cherish our identities, and take pride in the rich tapestry of our heritage. While Colonial Sickness is deeply rooted in African-centric perspectives, it’s not solely for those of Black or African descent. Its teachings and reflections can resonate with anyone who has been touched by the tendrils of colonization. Remember, colonization did not solely leave its mark on Africa and Africans; it cast long shadows over various parts of the world. Every corner has its stories, every soul its wounds. Whether you’re directly connected to African heritage, or you’ve felt the ripple effects of colonial ideologies in other ways, Colonial Sickness invites you on a journey of understanding, healing, and reconnecting with identities and histories often muted by colonial narratives. Colonial Sickness delves deep into the often-painful realization many grapples with the internalized belief that we are inherently flawed, and as a result, undeserving of love, belonging, and connection. Yet, the authors of this book don’t merely expose this affliction; they offer a healing balm. They navigate us back to the heart and soul of our identities—to the profound depth of what it means to be African, and beyond that, what it means to be genuine and true to oneself. Central to this journey is the importance of re-educating oneself about pre-colonial history, culture, and values. This re-education serves as a foundation, grounding readers in the rich tapestries of their heritage, dispelling myths, and setting right the skewed narratives they’ve been exposed to. The authors infuse their pages with a potent blend of wisdom and compassion, empowering readers with courage. Courage to stand tall and proud, courage to embrace the truth that we are enough just as we are. With each chapter, they invite readers to embark on a transformative journey to decolonize their minds, urging the shedding of colonially imposed narratives and the reclamation of authentic self-worth. The goal is clear: to unlearn the distorted teachings of colonized education and to forge ahead, free, and unfettered, in a world rich with diverse and vibrant cultures. Toronto, Canada 

Natasha Shokri Willis Opondo

Acknowledgment

This book would not have been written without the dedication of all the contributors. There was something intimate about the various stories and the willingness to share the authentic self. I am also indebted to all those who may not be directly involved, but whose presence in my life kept me going. This edited collection is a testimony of how our friends, family and our ancestors support our efforts to recenter our African ways of being. I would also like to thank my ancestors for their guidance and for opening the pathway to rethink of the African past and her expansiveness. I would like to thank those who will open this book to read, may you find what you are looking for. Finally, I want to acknowledge my Creator for guiding this project to the finishing line. Asante sana

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 Njoki Nathani Wane and Babere Kerata Chacha Part I Decolonizing History and Its Impact on Education from K–12 and Beyond  15 2 Seafaring  Africans and the Myth of Columbus: Reflecting on Fourteenth-­Century Mali and the Prospect of Atlantic Voyages 17 Jesse Ashiedu and Dhanela Sivaparan 3 Ubuntu: Social Justice Education, Governance, and Women Rights in Pre-­colonial Africa 43 Hellen Taabu 4 Women  to Women Marriage, Social Justice and House Property System in the Precolonial Period: Implications for Educating the Youth 59 Babere Kerata Chacha and Hellen Taabu

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5 Back  to the Roots: Reconnecting Africans in Diaspora Through Cultural Media, Education, and Personal Narratives 79 Kathy Lewis, Fanta Ongoiba, and Leonard Wandili 6 Ubuntu:  An Educational Tool to Dismantle Patriarchy—Voices from the Women Community Elders103 Rachael Kalaba Part II Identity and Ways of Knowing for the Educator and the Learner 129 7 Knowledge  Production and Colonial Myths: Centring Indigenous Knowledges Through Decolonization131 Andre Laylor 8 Seeking  the African Indigenous Ways of Being in Academia: The Intersecting Journeys of Two Black Women from Different Historical Colonial Experiences—Part One151 Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh and Betty Walters 9 Seeking  the African Indigenous Ways of Being in Academia: The Intersecting Journeys of Two Black Women from Different Historical Colonial Experiences—Part Two165 Betty Walters and Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh 10 Resistance,  Reparation, and Education Awareness: Resurgence of African Identities191 Nadine Abdel Ghafar, Veraline Akello, and Melanie Blackman 11 Cultural  Genocide: The Miseducation of the African Child211 Wairimu Njoroge

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Part III Spirituality and Land-Based Education 229 12 Three  Souls in Search for the Inner Peace and Spiritual Journey: Educational Moments231 Anushay Irfan Khan, Joel Mukwedeya, and Sameer Kapar 13 The  Soul in Soul Music: Educational Tools for Decolonial Ruptures259 Sein A. Kipusi 14 Kumina:  Kumina! Afro-Jamaican Religion, Education, and Practice: A Site Where Afrocentricity, ‘Bodily Knowledge’, and Spiritual Interconnection Are Activated, Negotiated, and Embodied271 Tanitiã Munroe 15 Land  Teachings: Lessons from Keiyo Elders289 Evelyn Kipkosgei, Isaac Tarus, and Njoki Nathani Wane 16 Beyond  Territory: Engendering Indigenous Philosophies of Land as Counter-hegemonic Resistance to Contemporary Framings of Land in Kenya313 Wambui Karanja 17 Conclusion343 Njoki Nathani Wane and Babere Kerata Chacha Index351

Notes on Contributors

Nadine  Abdel  Ghafar  is a first-generation Egyptian immigrant. She completed an MA in Social Justice Education with a Collaborative Specialization in Public Health Policy at the University of Toronto. She is currently a doctorate student at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Nadine is interested in exploring social and political barriers that impact mental health service utilization among migrant and refugee women. Drawing on critical, decolonizing, and anti-racist frameworks, Nadine’s research aims to redress inequitable policies and hegemonic practices that marginalize underprivileged populations. Veraline Akello  is a teacher by profession and a certified member of the Ontario College of Teachers. A Canadian and World Studies teacher for the last 19 years, she is currently completing her Master of Education in the Social Justice Education (SJE) program, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, OISE, University of Toronto, Canada. Jesse  Ashiedu  is a Nigerian-Canadian doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, researching African animation practices. Having completed a master’s degree in media production researching whitewashing in Hollywood, Ashiedu’s research interests focus on race, culture, and ethnicity, and how these concepts are represented and manufactured in media. Melanie Blackman  Care, joy, and wholistic relationship curation are at the center of Melanie’s praxis. Working alongside community for over 15 years, her expertise in relationship building brings members of community xvii

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together to thoughtfully engage in meaningful dialogue and create actions for collective change. Working in the education field for over a decade, she uses this as an opportunity to leverage institutional privilege to foster mutually beneficial relationships between community stakeholders and post-secondary institutions. For Melanie, education is an ongoing journey to achieving individual and communal transformation. As an ongoing learner, she is currently a student doing her Master of Education in the Social Justice Education (SJE) program. Her research interest honors community knowledge and healing with a focus on African knowledges and identities in connection to collective organizing within the Black communities. Babere  Kerata  Chacha  is Senior Lecturer in African History in the Department of Social Studies at Laikipia University in Kenya. He has an MA in History and a PhD in African History, both from Egerton University. He is former director of External Linkages and the founder and coordinator of the Centre for Human Rights at Laikipia University. Chacha has been a Fellow scholar of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; Junior Fellow, St. Antony’s College University of Oxford; Fellow, Wolfson College Cambridge; Global Fellow, University of New South Wales, Australia; and more recently honored by the University of Cape Town with a Sarah Bartmann Award for the year 2022 in excellence in teaching African women history. In the past, he was Adjunct Lecturer in History and Development Studies at the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton, and Egerton University. Chacha has also been engaged in designing curriculum for Police Science, Military History at the Kenya Military Academy in Lanet. His main research interest includes political assassinations and human rights, but he also has wide interests in environment, gender, education, reconciliation, religion, and sexuality. He consulted for the TJRC in Kenya on political assassinations and spearheaded the launch of the police science program and the study of human rights as a common core course at Laikipia University. Rachael Kalaba  is the creator and founder of ZamWILL. Rachael’s multifaceted career encompasses roles as an educator, board member, author, blogger, and activist, with a deep-rooted commitment to international development and education in Africa. Rachael Kalaba is completing her PhD in the Adult Education and Community Development program at the University of Toronto and a collaborative specialization in Comparative, International and Development Education. Her proposed PhD research combines adult education, international development, community

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development, and gender studies to explore women leadership in the African context using Afro-feminism and Ubuntu lenses. Sameer Kapar  is pursuing a PhD in Social Justice Education at University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). His focus is on fostering curiosity in students to learn about social issues so that they become social change agents. As a Fulbright Scholar with a doctorate in Information Technology, he advocates for access to information and technology usage for poverty alleviation, sustainable development, and addressing social justice issues in Nepal. Kapar believes religion is a complex tapestry that incorporates spirituality, traditions, and ideas; hence, it goes beyond formalized rituals and dogmas. He believes religion can evoke awe, humility, and a sense of connectivity with the cosmos when viewed with an open mind. Sameer’s intellectual rigor allows him to critically examine religious beliefs and explore alternative perspectives. He also appreciates religion’s beauty and mystery, recognizing its profound impact on individuals’ lives and their search for meaning. He is working on a dissertation on how participation as a social justice pillar assists with community development, focusing on marginalized communities in Nepal and developing a citizen’s participation framework to confront and mitigate social justice issues. Mulenga  Kapwepwe  is a highly accomplished Zambian artist, writer, cultural activist, and arts administrator. She is the co-founder of the Zambia Women’s History Museum. Born in Lusaka, Zambia, she has dedicated her life to promoting and preserving Zambian culture and arts. With her outstanding contributions to the cultural sector, Kapwepwe has earned recognition as one of Zambia’s leading cultural figures. Kapwepwe’s passion for the arts and culture developed at an early age. She attended primary and secondary school in Zambia before pursuing her tertiary education at the University of Zambia where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. Kapwepwe has played a significant role in the cultural scene for over 30 years. Kapwepwe’s dedication to the cultural sector goes beyond her artistic endeavors and publications. She has served in various leadership positions, serving on the Board of the National Museums Board of Zambia and the Board of UNESCO (Zambia), as well as serving as the Chairperson of the National Arts Council of Zambia, where she actively worked to promote and develop the arts across the country. Her efforts included organizing cultural festivals, supporting emerging artists, and advocating for the recognition of the arts as a vital

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part of national identity and development. Kapwepwe was the first Chairperson of the Arterial Network, an African network of artists that spans the entire continent. In recognition of her immense contributions, Kapwepwe has received numerous awards and accolades both locally and internationally. Her work has significantly impacted Zambia’s cultural landscape, and she continues to inspire generations of artists and cultural enthusiasts in her country and beyond. Wambui Karanja  is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Wambui has a Master’s in Law from the University of Toronto, Canada, and a Bachelor’s in Laws from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her research interests lie in the fields of anti-colonial and decolonial theorizing, Indigenous philosophies and epistemologies, decolonization, Indigenous land rights, research methodologies, gender issues, and law and development theories. Wambui has published several book chapters on land, indigeneity, and gender issues and has co-authored an anthology on the role of Elders’ Cultural knowledges in education. Anushay Irfan Khan  is a community-centered educator, scholar-practitioner, and researcher currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. As a critical scholar whose work is rooted in anti-racist, feminist, Indigenous, anticolonial ways of knowing, Anushay is passionate about examining the tensions and challenges that emerge in the pursuit of decolonization. With a specific interest in anti-education and decolonial education in South Asia and its connection to the global, transnational geopolitical praxes of power, her research draws on intersectional and anti-oppressive education and social change in the pursuit of decolonial futures. Evelyn  Kipkosgei is Assistant Professor of Teaching Stream in the Department of Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto, and is Associate Fellow in the Centre for Medica, Culture & Education. Her scholarship encapsulates impacts of resource extraction, environmental degradation, and climate change recognizing that the environment is a significant cultural artifact to local communities. Sein A. Kipusi  received her doctorate in Social Justice Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral work investigated financial literacy education among

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racialized business owners in Toronto. Her research and advocacy centers on anti-colonial and African and indigenous knowledge frameworks. Sein completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus at the pilot Transitional Year Program focusing on the challenges and successes of curriculum development, equity in recruitment, and inclusive diversity in access programs. Andre  Laylor  is a PhD candidate in Social Justice Education in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Andre’s research interests are in anti-Black racism, child welfare, colonialism, neoliberalism, anti-colonial interventions, and resistance movements. Particularly, he is interested in how the child welfare system reproduces itself and the disparity of Black families it encounters. Kathy  Lewis  is a Secondary School Teacher with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). As an educator with the TDSB, in the role of Curriculum Leader for Student Engagement, Equity and Wellbeing, Kathy has been critically involved in school and community activism. She has organized several professional development workshops for staff and administrators through critical inquiry, in deconstructing anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and examining ways educators can critically engage students in a co-construction and co-production of knowledge within their own instinctual frame of understanding that is self-validating and self-­affirming. Kathy is also a member of The Centre for Integrative AntiRacism Studies (CIARS) and was one of the panelists for the Rising up During COVID-19: Solidarity, Anti-Black Racism and Health’s panel discussion. Kathy also co-­moderated the CIARS in Conversation: Critical Cross-Racial Conversations: Thinking Through Our Complicities, Implications and Responsibilities. Kathy has completed her Master’s in Education in Social Justice Education, with a Collaborative Specialist in Educational Policy, at OISE, University of Toronto. She is pursuing her PhD in Social Justice Education at OISE, University of Toronto. Her research and practice mirror a decolonial framework that centers students’ history and cultural ways of knowing. Kathy’s unique approach to school as a community is one that is rooted in the solidarity of inclusivity, a subversive lens that embraces sites of historical curiosity necessary in authenticating students’ lived-experiences and histories and building links of communal bonds.

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Joel  Mukwedeya  is an All But Dissertation (ABD) candidate in the Doctor of Philosophy in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (U of T/OISE). He holds a Master of Education in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto/Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and a postgraduate Diploma in Career and Work Counselling, from George Brown College, Toronto, Canada. He received his Bachelor’s in Education from Worcester College of Higher Education in England. He is both an Ontario Certified Teacher (OCT) and a Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) holder in the United Kingdom, in good standing. He shares extensive teaching experience, both international and local, holding space and bearing witness to the life stories of creativity, courage, sharing, appreciation, empathy, compassion, reciprocity, hope, and learning journeys of diverse children, youth, adult individuals, families, and communities. His Doctoral Thesis is entitled “uBuntu: Towards a Curriculum in Environmental Education” where he contends that of all the many adverse outcomes colonialism has exacted on colonized peoples everywhere is erosion and, in some cases, erasure of Indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge systems. In the context of environmental education, non-western perspectives have often been ignored, marginalized, or made to seem diminished as “primitive.” Since environmental sustainability is a global imperative, it will be important that these different worldviews are acknowledged, especially when these contribute toward practical and sustainable solutions to the environmental challenges that blight us all. Tanitiã Munroe  is a Black scholar and researcher with degrees in education and child and youth care practice. She is pursuing a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development with a collaborative specialization in Educational Policy at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)—University of Toronto. Her scholarship and research are focused on the education experiences of African, Afro-­Caribbean, and Black (ACB) diasporic youth and their families in Canada using an anti-colonial, critical race, and Queer Black feminist theorizing. Tanitiã has published and otherwise disseminated on issues and themes related to Canadian K-12 education policies, Black youth and their family’s experience engaging with Canadian schools, and Post-Secondary Education (PSE) access for Black 2SLGBTQ young people. Over the years, Tanitiã has been professionally engaged with young people in education and community settings and the

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youth criminal justice system through community outreach initiatives in various countries. She is a 2023 Viola Desmond Award honoree. Earning recognition for her community work with Black youth in the areas of health and wellbeing, research, education, and advocacy, Tanitia is a senior research coordinator at Toronto District School Board (TDSB) where she continues to re-imagine education research by centering student voice. Wairimu  Njoroge  is an African Indigenous woman. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Social Work. Njoroge is currently pursuing her PhD in Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and also studying African spirituality to journey in the becoming of a humane-scholar and healer. As a therapist, Njoroge capitalizes on African Indigenous knowledges and wisdom in her interventions with individuals, families, and communities. Njoroge takes a holistic approach to wellness, centering people’s stories within the context of their ancestral and diverse collective histories, collaboratively working to strengthen people’s sense of dignity. Njoroge is committed to therapeutic practices invested in restoration, healing, and recreation of dignified, meaningful, and sustainable living. Fanta Ongoiba  holds Master’s in Administration and Management from Sherbrooke University Québec, Canada; Master of Science in Economy from the National School of Administration of Bamako (University), Mali; a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the National School of Administration of Bamako (University), Mali; and another bachelor’s degree from Business school of Administration in Algeria on Taxation (University) Fiscal inspector diploma. Presently she is doing her PhD on Social Justice Education at OISE University of Toronto. Ms. Ongoiba has worked in a number of capacities related to human rights and humanitarian causes, including as treatment information exchange counselor at CATIE (Canada’s source for information about HIV and hepatitis C) and as a community health promotion worker at the francophone center of Toronto. She considers herself a human rights activist and is particularly concerned with human rights and health for people living with HIV and AIDS. Ms. Ongoiba is currently the executive director of Africans in Partnership Against AIDS (APAA) and a leader in the African community. She works on a number of projects related to challenging but important issues such as supporting people to speak about reproductive health and sexually transmitted infections (including HIV), Muslim girls and Imams, and HIV.

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Ms. Ongoiba is also a founding member and currently a co-chair of the African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario (ACCHO) since 2011, co-chair of the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment in 2008, and treasurer of the Board for Women’s Health in Women’s Hands in 2003. She also served on the Ontario Advisory Committee on HIV/ AIDS for at least 10 years and served on the Board of Directors for the Prisoners Action Support AIDS Network (PASAN) in 2009, as well as on the Board of Directors for Canadian Center For Victims of Torture as a chair 2016. Willis Opondo  is a third-year PhD student at the Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the University of Toronto. Willis is currently a research associate consultant with the Center of Excellence for Black Student Achievement at the Toronto District School Board. Previously, he taught undergraduate sociology courses at Machakos University and the University of Nairobi in Kenya as an adjunct lecturer and worked as a consultant urban sociologist for organizations in East Africa. He has also been involved in various social development and behavioral research projects in East Africa. His research interests include Indigenous knowledges and governance, decolonization, youth engagement in decision-making, and equity in education in Africa. Natasha Shokri  is a PhD student in Social Justice Education at OISE, University of Toronto. She works as a teaching assistant and graduate assistant, focusing on research areas like happiness, decolonization, Black feminism, Black education, peace and conflict, hope and resiliency, and post-memory, with a focus on promoting equity, justice, and positive social change. She has been entitled as UNESCO Youth Peace Ambassador in 2011 Dhanela Sivaparan  was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She is an educator, social activist, youth advocate, and equity, diversity, and inclusion director. Dhanela Sivaparan enjoys spending time with youth, creative writing, storytelling, and traveling. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. Her goal is to inspire young people to dream, write, build positive relationships, and give back to their communities. She has co-authored her first children’s book, Gavin’s Hidden Talent, along with two academic chapters and peer reviews. Hellen  Taabu Kenyan Born Hellen Chepkoech Komen Taabu is a Registered Nurse in Ontario, Canada, pursuing her PhD studies at the

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Department of Social Justice Education. She is also an educator and a community activist who actively champions Black immigrants and nurses’ rights in her community. Hellen’s work revolves around disrupting power imbalances, inequities, and injustices that are deeply entrenched in the schools and healthcare system in Canada. Hellen calls for the interrogation of varied perspectives and exposing colonizing rhetorics and characteristics in a bid to expose, resist, transform, and liberate the spaces we inhabit from the persistent presence of colonialism. Hellen champions decentering knowledge, learning, and unlearning through embracing the rich and diverse Indigenous African knowledge. She advocates for the disruption of the Western ways of knowing in academia by embracing African thoughts and ideas that are empowering, meaningful, and context specific and have meaningful impact on the lived experiences of those impacted. Isaac Tarus  is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, History and Religious Studies at Egerton University. He was head of Department from May 2017 to June 2021. He holds a BA (Honours) and an MA (History) from the University of Nairobi and a PhD from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. His PhD was on the “Direct taxation of Africans in Kenya” which has generated a number of articles published in refereed journals, among them CODESRIA’s Africa Development. He has successfully supervised more than twenty MA (History) students and one PhD. He has attended many local and international conferences in South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malaysia, and the USA.  He served as external examiner for Kenyatta University and the University of Nairobi for the academic year 2020–2021. In addition, he has served as postgraduate external examiner for Kabarak University, Kisii University, Mount Kenya University, and Laikipia University. Between May and August 2021, he was a Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellowship Program Host for Prof Shadrack Nasong’o, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. After serving as head of department for a period of four years, he is now back to active teaching, research, advising, and mentorship. Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh  also known as Iye Uyemi is a wife and mother with a productive Meritah (African) family rooted in her Meritah Indigenous culture, spirituality, and worldview. Very significant to her becoming and career as a researcher and educator is her life as an initiate of Meritah’s (Africa’s) traditional Ancestral education and Wisdom school of the Dogomba (Dogon) bloodline, where she learns at the feet

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of traditional Meritah Indigenous elders, a network of priesthood, and kingship in Western Meritah (Africa). As an author, she writes stories that honor Meritah’s Ancestral lineage, culture, tradition, and spirituality. She is also a Meritah (African) Wisdom Indigenous Educator, cultural consultant, storyteller for children and families, the founder and executive director of Meritah Wisdom Education Center for Children and Families, program coordinator of Meritah Indigenous Homeschool, the owner of OshoIseh Indigenous African Educational and Cultural Consulting Services, the host of the Repiyah Heritage TV show, and recipient of many prestigious awards. As a cultural educator, through the lens of African Indigenous Education, she helps her learners answer the questions of identity (who am I?), goal, and purpose. She is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Social Justice Education at OISE, University of Toronto, where she also gained her Master of Arts in Educational Leadership & Policy, with some published academic work. She lectures and presents at schools and is invited as the Mistress of Ceremonies to host conferences and moderate events, along with breathtaking oral traditional storytelling performances, all from the perspective of the richness of Meritah (African) Indigenous culture, spiritual worldview, traditions, and stories. As a cultural consultant, she possesses extensive knowledge of the Meritah culture and how services can best be delivered to meet the needs of the community of the people of Meritah (African) descent. Meritah is the Indigenous name with which our Ancestors referred to the beloved Land people call Africa today. Betty Walters  is in her final year as a student in the MEd Social Justice Program at OISE/UT and is an Alumni from the University of Toronto with an Honours BBA in Political Science, English and Writing and Rhetoric. As an employee at the University of Toronto for over 26 years, she has worked in several departments in various capacities and is presently the program advisor in the Management Department at UTSC. She has created many initiatives to facilitate students’ successful transition into university life, such as Peer Tutor Program, Exam Prep Sessions, and Smart Study Groups. Betty serves as a leader of the Private Space Group which is comprised of Black-identifying staff, and this group provides support and guidance to the department in matters pertaining to equity, diversity, and inclusion for Black folks. They have created relevant initiatives for Black identifying

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high school students and Black community professionals, as well as providing mentorship to the Black Student in Business club. Betty serves on the executive of the USW1998 union of the University of Toronto which has approximately 8500 members. Additionally, for several years, she served as a Steward and Chief Steward and spent countless hours guiding employees through the grievance process. Betty is a strong advocate for justice and has helped developed policies within her department to enhance student experience, and through her guidance and advocacy, she has contributed to maintaining a welcoming and inclusive workplace for all stakeholders. Her lifelong passion is to promote equity and justice in all spaces. Leonard  Wandili  was born in Western Kenya. After graduating from Friend’s School Kamusinga in Kimilili, he taught for one year before immigrating to Canada in 1989. He enrolled in George Brown College (Toronto), earning a Diploma in Information Systems. Further education included a BA in Political Science (University of Toronto) and an MEd (York University), and he was working on his PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Leonard worked with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) until his demise. Prior to IRB, Leonard worked with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). Leonard was an experienced education administrator (International Languages and Cultural Heritage Programs). He initiated several international language courses targeting communityspecific needs for children of immigrants, including Kiswahili language classes delivered mainly to children of the East African diaspora. Leonard was a founder member of several academic and community associations in Canada including the African Heritage Educators Network (AHEN) and the Kenyan Community in Ontario (KCO) where he served as the founding president. He also served on the board of CES (Community Education Service) Canada and Abeingo Association Canada as a director. Njoki Nathani Wane, PhD  is a professor at the University of Toronto, and currently chair in the Department of Social Justice Education at OISE/U of T. She is an accomplished educator, researcher, and educational leader. From 2011 to 2014, Professor Wane served as special advisor on Status of Women Issues, contributing to research and policy development concerning the intersectionality of gender with race, disability, sexual orientation, and aboriginal at the University of Toronto. From 2018 to 2021, she has also served as the advisor to the vice-president,

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human resources and equity on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. She also served as director, Center for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies (CIARS) at OISE from 2006 to 2014. An award-winning teacher, Professor Wane was the recipient of many awards, the most recent ones being Black History Champion & Leadership Excellence Award, presented by CETI, HHS, NICS & SC (all community organization) (2023); Excellence Award in Education, awarded by JunCtion Community Organization (2022); Excellence Award in Community Engagement in Toronto (2020); The Gown: African Scholars Award, African Alumni Association, University of Toronto (2018); The President of Toronto Teaching Award (2017). She is well published with her most recent book being: From my Mother’s Back: A Journey from Kenya to Canada. Her forthcoming edited collection book is Education, Colonial Sickness: Anti-Colonial African Indigenous Project.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2

The genealogy of the kings of Mali based on the chronicle of Ibn-Khaldun (Levtzion, 1963) The kingdoms of Ghana and Mali, dated ca. 1050, ca. 1300, and ca. 1500 (Levtzion, 1973, p. 2)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Njoki Nathani Wane and Babere Kerata Chacha

Over the last 500 years people of African ancestry have been objects of research. Interestingly, we have come to accept (not all though) the status quo. We have lost our languages, our culture, our medicine, our foods, our spirituality, our systems of governance, African Indigenous economics, and even our educational systems. We have been exploited so much that there is vehement denial of this open exploitation. The outcome of all this is what we are referring to as colonial sickness. How do we explain the open self-hatred of how we look, the texture of our hair, the color of our skin? In this book, however, the authors are reminding us that all is not lost. In this decolonial project we have embarked on a journey of healing, reclaiming, excavating, extracting, and reassembling the pieces of our Africanness to recreate our story. We are excavating our past to enable us to deal with psychological sickness as well as the spirit injury. The exercise

N. N. Wane (*) Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] B. K. Chacha Laikipia University, Nyahururu, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_1

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of excavating information which the colonizers have made every effort to mask is so that our next generation will know who they are and where they have been. To do this, we had to be focused and identify the areas we would concentrate on. Some of the authors examined colonial education and how this has distorted our past; some chapters wanted to examine how life was before 1492; while others decided to compare notes from their own standpoint, regardless of whether they were of African ancestry. At the initial stages of this project, we held lots of conversations and there was a felt need to carry out an action orient project, and in particular the dismantling of colonial structures and creation of new ones. Dealing with colonial sickness is a complex process because it is informed by elements such as unlearning and learning what was/is African. The process is informed by multiple elements such as knowing who we really are; our roots, our Indigenous knowledges, and identifying our lost histories; Indigenous education; science; astronomy; philosophies. In addition to this, knowing how our minds have been manipulated (Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Albert Memmi; Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni; Kenneth Kaunda; Mudenda Simukungwe). Also paying attention to how our past has informed our present reality and how it will impact our future (Sankofa Philosophy). As well, knowing how colonized we are because, as Harriet Tubman said, “more slaves could have been saved if they knew they were slaves.” We, the colonized, have “became the prisoner of the entire system” (Fanon, 1991, p. 122). The big question is: how do we free ourselves from the yoke of self-imprisonment; individually and collectively? Our conversations concluded that, understanding things beyond what is obvious and the fact that decolonizing journey is an essential aspect of our moving forward, we need to know our past to decolonize and none can do this for us, except us. As one of the African proverb states: A Bird can only wave its tail. This proverb is to warn us that we are the only ones who can take care of our colonial sickness. We cannot wait for outsiders to do it for us. In the last two decades, we have witnessed the quest for decolonization through research, writing, teaching, and curriculum across the globe. Calls to decolonize higher education, in particular the university, has been overwhelming in recent years (Fommunyan, 2017). Originally the term ‘decolonization’ was used to denote the processes relating to cultural, economic, socio-political, and cultural aspects, especially after colonial rule. Nonetheless, the goal of decolonizing has evolved past not only the need to dismantle colonial empires but all imperial structures. Today,

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decolonization is deemed a basis for restorative justice under the lens of the psychological, economic, and cultural spectrum (Imam et al., 1994). Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America have led the way, but this process has lagged especially in Canada, Australia, and most parts of Europe. Kessia, Marksb, and Ramugondo (2020, p. 271) argue that [d]ecolonizing … is best understood as a verb that entails a political and normative ethic and practice of resistance and intentional undoing— unlearning and dismantling unjust practices, assumptions, and institutions—as well as persistent positive action to create and build alternative spaces and ways of knowing. We present four dimensions of decolonizing work: structural, epistemic, personal, and relational, which are entangled and equally necessary.

Not long ago, inspirations to ‘decolonize’ the subject of western scholarship seemed to be the in thing. The necessity to revisit Indigenous land, for instance, has been fronted by Boveda and Bhattacharya (2019); those dwelling on and have critically reflected on existing practices and knowledge (Ali, 2014; Datta, 2018; Torretta & Reitsma, 2019; Zavala, 2013) embrace the local processes (de Martins & de Oliveira, 2016; Dourish & Mainwaring, 2012; Walters & Simoni, 2009) and strengthen Indigenous theory and practice (Du, 2023; Mawere & van Stam, 2015; Nkwo & Orji, 2018); in fact, decolonization has demanded an Indigenous contextual framework and a centering of Indigenous sovereignty, and ways of thinking. Others have delved on dismantling the colonial status quo (Bidwell, 2016; Boveda and Bhattacharya, 2019; Keyes et  al., 2019; Le Grange, 2019). Indigenous people have been on the receiving end in most nations across the globe where the reign of coloniality is still abound. They do not possess power or self-determination (Mamdani, 1990). Such nations that still have colonizers are deemed as settler-colonial, a term that Patrick Wolfe coined in the 1990s. Wolfe asserted that “invasion is a structure but not an event” (Wolfe, 2002). As a result, decolonization connotes attempting to understand the diverse yet complex societies in our continents based on Indigenous values and structures. This task came to light in the decolonization era between the 1950s and 1960s. According to Mama (2005), decolonizing entails having a shift in our perspectives from viewing Africa from the colonial power institutions as well as an intellectual apparatus carried from the Global North, which is applied across the globe, to

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delving into the Indigenous African societal origins and patterns of thought that are embodied and the ways through which the patterns of thought have been influenced based on the impact of the colonial rule (Boshoff, 2010) and indeed spiritual—derived from Northern dominance (Yarosh, 2017). When ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign called for statues of Cecil Rhodes to be removed at the University of Cape Town, the decolonization initiative moved beyond requesting the removal of colonial symbols from university campuses to demanding that universities recognize the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism in academic curricula and take steps to correct them (Maldonado-Torres, 2007: 243). Christopher Clapham insists that calls to ‘decolonize’ African studies beg the question of what this quest involves (Shahjahan et al., 2009). Historians and anthropological insights have played a critical role in revolutionizing and subsequently understanding the African continent, which had continuously failed to hold on to its impetus given the prevalent authoritarianism and decay of the post-independence era, which further led to a deterioration of Africa’s universities (Chalmers, 2017). The idea spread fast to other nations across the globe. The term has recently connoted development, especially in North America and Europe, subordinating the African study to agendas present in the Global North that may point at recolonization as opposed to decolonization. Nonetheless, profound decolonization of knowledge production for the African continent relies on a return to the African roots. Thus, this book will elucidate epicolonial dynamics that characterize a significant level of higher education and, subsequently, the local knowledges relating to its production of, with, and for the African continent. Authors have approached this from an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach. We confront various dimensions of decolonizing work—structural, epistemic, personal, and relational—which are entangled and equally necessary. This book illuminates other sites and dimensions of decolonizing not only from Africa but also from other areas. This convergence of critical scholarship, theoretical inquiry, and empirical research is committed to questioning and redressing inequality in contemporary history and other African Studies. It signals one of many steps in a bid to consultatively examine how knowledge and power have been both defined and subsequently denied through the sphere of academic practice. We have approached the term decolonizing both as a verb and as the study subject; also, as an epistemic and methodological orientation,

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theory, and praxis of research and teaching. Epicolonial dynamics outline a phenomenon through which the cause may or may not be directly traceable to the histories or legacies of overt colonial encounters; however, but in which the outcomes and power relations and outcomes are recognizable as colonial (Marks, 2020). Hence, calls regarding decolonizing correlate with individuals’ understanding of coloniality as well as colonialism that exceed historical figures and dates. Both coloniality and colonialism can be teleologically defined as the subjugation and subjection of societies, people, and experiences with the aim of accumulating power, knowledge, and wealth that serve, either directly or indirectly, White hegemony (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017). This calls for asking provocative and disruptive questions bound to lead to actions that are not necessarily self-referential hand-wringing or even performance weakness. Universities play an integral role in creating and formulating expertise that intrigues a sense of making us abandon diverse ways of knowing, sensing, and expressing information. The power to curate and bestow qualifications aid in making the ivory tower a significantly powerful place as far as editing and excluding knowledge is concerned. Decolonizing underpins determining why individuals read some texts but not others while confronting knowledge they represent and the knowledge they elide. However, it bids for reconfiguration of academic authority and accountability as bases for deriving mutuality and rigorous plurality as opposed to top-down hierarchies about social and professional exclusions. Student-­ led protests continuously experienced in South Africa especially in 2015 were largely centered on the existing structural inequalities present in higher education systems. The protests were experienced in Europe as students in various universities, such as the University College of London, launched a campaign dubbed “Why is my curriculum White?” That sought to inspire the ongoing student-led initiatives in the United Kingdom. Besides, at Georgetown, the students also managed to stage a successful campaign for descendants of about 272 enslaved individuals sold between 1838, 30 years after the transatlantic slave trade was abolished. Rather than divulging into usual hashtags, the movements and student uprisings reflected the long-­standing contestations experienced due to agency, power, and influence in the studies regarding African and Diasporic issues, people, and politics. They built on global anticolonial solidarity traditions, which included coordination of campaigns such as the anti-apartheid uprisings and ‘sit-ins’ in various universities across the globe in the 1980s. The movements also denoted the

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leadership of students and the subsequent generation of scholars and their role in stretching the existing moral imaginations and generation of new opportunities regarding intellectual accountability in classrooms and in our research as part of our work and whenever protests occur. The introduction chapters give an insight into the four dimensions regarding the histories of delocalization praxis in different locales. This is done to illustrate how scholars have an integral role in contributing to the practical yet meaningful ways of the decolonial turn, as outlined by the example of the University of Cape Town. The outlined positioning connotes the idea of decolonial orientation and African Studies on politics of location, praxis, and representation. Nonetheless, we should consider that the sole responsibility of decolonizing our teaching and scholarship emanates from the definition we harbor regarding African Studies (Torretta & Reitsma, 2019). African Studies highlights the transdisciplinary knowledge about Africa and the African populace. As a result, the definition incorporates the element of Africa and the African populace, phenomena against exceptional sizing studies about Africa but contextualizing and specifying the exact knowledge. Therefore, the vision of African Studies rests on the normative commitments about the intention and possibility of knowledge creation both in and for the continent. Hence, decolonizing seeks to redeem or disentangle the heart of theory building and theory making across the different epistemic and disciplinary domains. Still, African Studies, an Afro-centric multidisciplinary scholarly community, is often entrapped and entangled in systems of oppression (Tambuwal, 2013; Vorster & Quinn, 2017). Thus, chapters in this book, therefore, attend to these dynamics while focusing on the future of Africa. Likewise, the operations of the global coloniality can be likened to an invisible power matrix that relates to shaping and sustaining the asymmetrical power relations between the Global South and its Global North counterpart (Tambuwal, 2013). The present power transformations have enabled the re-emergence of having a Sinocentric economic power and processes relating to de-westernization, such as the rise of South-South power blocs, which include BRICS. Nonetheless, this does not mean that there is a genuine deimperialization and decolonization of the modern world to the extents where it is open to the creation of other futures. Global coloniality often has frustrated initiatives relating to decolonization that aimed at the output of postcolonial futures that are free from coloniality (Zeleza, 2004).

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The chapters presented here posit that global coloniality remains one of the most important modern power structures that constrain and limit African agency. To support this proposition, we delve deeper into an analysis of the architecture and configuration of the current asymmetrical global power structures; unmask imperial/colonial reason embedded in Euro-North American-centric epistemology as well as the problem of Eurocentrism; and unpack the Cartesian notions of being and its relegation of African subjectivity to a perpetual state of becoming (Hajibayova et al., 2016). Within this context, Africans are portrayed as fighting subjects concerning the new world order that is decolonized and open to the emergence of contemporary humanism and African futures. In essence, the forgoing chapters presented here have attempted to show in different ways how and why we must decolonize the way we teach, research, and work with one another. As seen, our expertise is among the most interdisciplinary and wide-ranging, stretching from the pre-colonial era to the present and spanning through much of the world (Kimwaga, 2010). Our collective engagement with vast human experience is an encouragement to further reflect on how the studies can promote empathy and respect for everyone and the ability to recognize and challenge injustice where it exists (Mkabela, 2005; Sarong, 2002; Sarpong, 1991). Also, it is a basis for encouraging us to establish ways of understanding the past in different intellectual traditions and perspectives. Hence, decolonizing offers an opportunity for working with new frameworks and approaches that enable having a rich understanding of structures and processes that have aided in the development of our world today and ways of making it better. We believe that teaching and research activities in universities serve as platforms for new ways of perceiving the world and subsequently help us build a fairer yet just society. Studying our history leads to the development of empathy and respect regarding the people having lives that are different from their own (Berzowska et al., 2019). Having an engagement with the past in a fair, intellectually honest, yet rigorous way is the most significant step in improving our present state. Besides, we recognize the fact that modern History academic discipline emerged from the European continent during a period that was characterized by increased colonial exploitation and nationalism that formed the knowledge framework closely relies on the colonialist worldview; one that gives privilege to the ideas, rights, and dignity of some groups of people above others (Adamu, 2016). Thus, it includes questions regarding the stories we choose to tell

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from various perspectives. Our conditioned nature in reflecting on past events and activities is often pegged on the imperialist and racialized schools of thought. In Chap. 2, Jesse Ashiedu and Dhanela Sivaparan explore ways in which Malians’ arrival in the Americas during the fourteenth century was coordinated and affirm that it was possible because the Kingdom of Mali had evolved sail technology that enabled its merchants and explorers to sail around the coastal areas. This chapter adds to the growing literature on the wider decolonial history of Africa so that recognition toward African role in world history will continue to be produced by its people. The authors introduce a different angle of pre-Columbian history that challenges the normative knowledge that Christopher Columbus discovered America. The story of the Malian King who ventured across the Atlantic will undoubtedly be a source of discussion for years to come. In Chap. 3, Hellen Taabu looks at a social system of Ubuntu and its implication on social justice and the rule of law in Africa. It demonstrates that pre-colonial Africa had a concept of dignity grounded in moral practice and thinking that formed the foundations of social justice as an everyday lived experience. The author maintains that various African Indigenous groups maintained law and order while upholding social justice of all the participants. Using examples from diverse cultures, the chapter advances the argument of how African Indigenous communities used customary law to control its members through encouraging good behaviors and sanctioning negative behaviors. In Chap. 4, Hellen Taabu and Babere Kerata Chacha illustrate how a pre-colonial system of women-to-women marriage provided cushion and social justice to the disadvantaged women. They argue that by marrying women, male dominance would be radically disrupted. Their stories may begin with land and struggles over material resources, but they are also stories of love, commitment, children, sexual freedom, vulnerability, and empowerment. These practices made these women’s stories unique and more compelling to feminists who are constantly searching for unique practices of feminism that resemble, but are not engineered by, western feminism. In Chap. 5, Leonard Wandili, Kathy Lewis, and Fanta Ongoiba’s ‘Back to the Roots: Reconnecting Africans in Diaspora Through Cultural Media, Education, and Personal Narratives’ narrates the negative effects of Slave Trade for over 500 years, which has led to a total disconnect of people of African descent around the rest of the world. Over 17 million people were

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trafficked mainly from the coast of West Africa to the United States, West Indies, Europe, and the Caribbean to work as slaves in gold and silver mines, and sugar cane and cotton plantations. It asserts that the search for ancestral roots for Africans in the Diasporas can be very tormenting, emotional, and devastating. This reflects in the homecoming of the African. Furthermore, cultural media is embedded in the culture of people. In Chap. 6, Rachael Kalaba critiques the tendency of the African and Zambian gender agenda to adopt western-centric methodologies. The chapter argues that a greater emphasis on traditional African methods such as Ubuntu could lead to a more comprehensive and culturally relevant approach to gender equality and inclusion. The analysis draws from practical and theoretical perspectives to demonstrate the effectiveness of Ubuntu as an educational tool in addressing social, political, and economic inclusion. This chapter highlights the need to acknowledge and incorporate traditional African methodologies into the larger discourse on gender equality and inclusion in Zambia and beyond. Doing so, Ubuntu, as an educational tool, aims to contribute to a more inclusive and culturally sensitive approach to promoting gender equality and dignity among genders. In Chap. 7, Andre Laylor discusses knowledge production and colonial myths. In doing this, he theorizes Indigenous knowledges through the lens of decolonization. The chapter also problematizes the questions of whose history matters; what is the purpose of history; how representation is used in nation-building, the role of knowledge and power; and how Indigenous communities resist dominant discourses of representation through decolonial processes. In Chap. 8, Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh and Betty Walters examine the history of Africa’s Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge production and argue that knowledge production did not begin with westernization process or rather knowledge systems, and as such neither should their future depend exclusively on western and other worldviews. They focused on the African Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and living by highlighting on the interruption of our Indigenous ways of knowing through slavery and colonization. In Chap. 9, Betty Walters and Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh, in the second part of their chapter titled ‘Seeking the African Indigenous Ways of Being in Academia,’ look at life through the eyes of two women and focus on the journey to reclaim what was disrupted. The focus of this section is on Betty’s journey as an African descendant from the Caribbean.

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They provide an understanding of her new road to Enlightenment about her African ancestry and the emotional, psychological, and spiritual impact of that knowledge on her perception of Africans. In Chap. 10, Nadine Abdel Ghafar, Veraline Akello, and Melanie Blackman use individual and collective approaches in exploring the African identity that lies within and in support of collective liberation. They begin with the premise that Africa is rich in its culture, spirituality, and resources. From colonization to globalization, Eurocentrism and its cultural dominance have attempted to weaken African identities. Drawing from the work of Black African and Diasporic scholars, they start by providing a brief snapshot of Africa’s history through an exploration of our roots and African practices. Through personal narratives and accounts, the chapter explores individual and collective approaches for resistance and recommendations for reparations. Implementation would encourage transformational healing and restorative change resulting in the successful resurgence of African identities and collective action. In Chap. 11, Chapter 12, ‘Three Souls in Search for the Inner Peace and Spiritual Journey,’ explores the journeys of three souls—Joel, a Christian from Zimbabwe; Anushay, a Muslim from Pakistan; and Sameer, a Hindu from Nepal. Despite their cultural differences and positionalities guided by diverse lived experiences, spirituality has brought them together. Though this journey as unfamiliar strangers, spirituality’s ultimate strength joined them together through the “ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something larger and more trustworthy than their egos.” In Chap. 13, Sein Kipusi conceptualizes the ‘soul’ as a factor in Afro music and positions it within soul music as conclusively and inherently undefinable. Using several cases of Black cultural theorists, she argues that the soul in soul music is uniquely embedded in subjective narratives derived from the intersection of oppression—politically, socially, and economically—and how often the soul is in a state of constant fluctuation without a time constraint. On the other hand, the chapter examines immortality of a soul, a basis upon which soul music connects with oppression socially, politically, and economically and how the imagery and context of how soul music is portrayed in mainstream society as being a representation of the ‘other.’ Chapter 14 by Tanitiã Munroe discusses the concept of Kumina, which is an Afro-Jamaican religion and practice that include secular ceremonies, dance, and music that developed from the beliefs and traditions brought

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to the island by Kongo enslaved people and indentured laborers. The chapter is concerned with epistemological questions of dance, specifically the nature of Kumina dance as knowledge. It illuminates Kumina dance as a site of pedagogy, centering Black women as one of the leaders and teachers. In Chap. 15, Evelyn Kipkosgei, Isaac Tarus, Kiplagat Kotut, and Njoki Nathani Wane look at an African Indigenous land tenure system among the Keiyo community in Kenya. They examine how it may be possible to re-imagine the community in relationship with its environments, especially as it pertains to land tenure in African contexts. In this process, community participation is a necessity and cannot be a sort of superficial bandage solution but must involve the interrogation of the larger structures and discourses that underpin development and land tenure among the Keiyo community in Kenya. The chapter explores what this commodification means for African education and how a critical pedagogy based on Indigenous knowledges might be used to resist and disrupt western educational discourses and thus decolonize the land tenure system in Africa. In Chap. 16, ‘Engendering Indigenous Philosophies of Land as Counter-hegemonic Resistance to Contemporary Framings of Land in Keny,’ Wambui Karanja examines the contemporary conceptualization of land in Kenya and indeed, in Africa, to explore how the western paradigms defines it. She argues that these definitions have confined land within the narrow Eurocentric realms of English property law regimes and have conceived of land as a commodity and property that, like other commodities, can be traded in the marketplace. This chapter argues that how land is taken up in contemporary discourses in Africa privileges western theories of land and makes the case for centering Indigenous worldviews on land. Drawing examples from the land situation in Kenya and Gikuyu Indigenous land tenure system, the chapter argues that colonial and existing neo-liberal theories of the old and the new world order have resulted in land loss and dispossession.

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Vorster, J. A., & Quinn, L. (2017). The decolonial turn: What does it mean for academic staff development? Education as Change, 21(1), 31–49. Walters, K. L., & Simoni, J. M. (2009). Indigenist collaborative research efforts in Native American communities. The Field Research Survival Guide, 146–173. Wolfe, P. (2002). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. Yarosh, O. (2017). Globalization of redemptive sociality: al-Ahbash and Haqqaniyya transnational Sufi networks in West Asia and Central-Eastern Europe. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 10(1), 22–35. Zavala, M. (2013). What do we mean by decolonizing research strategies? Lessons from decolonizing, Indigenous research projects in New Zealand, and Latin America. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1), 55–71. Zeleza, P. T. (2004). The disciplinary, interdisciplinary and global dimensions of African Studies. International Journal of African Renaissance Studies, 1(2), 195–220.

PART I

Decolonizing History and Its Impact on Education from K–12 and Beyond

CHAPTER 2

Seafaring Africans and the Myth of Columbus: Reflecting on Fourteenth-­Century Mali and the Prospect of Atlantic Voyages Jesse Ashiedu and Dhanela Sivaparan

Introduction They departed and a long time passed before anyone came back. Then one ship returned and we asked the captain what news they brought. He said: “Yes, O Sultan, we travelled for a long time until there appeared in the open sea [as it were] a river with a powerful current. … The [other] ships went on ahead but when they reached that place they did not return. … As for me, I went about at once and did not enter that river.” But the sultan disbelieved him. Then that sultan got ready 2000 ships, 1000 for himself and the men whom he took with

J. Ashiedu (*) Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] D. Sivaparan University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_2

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him and 1000 for water and provisions. He left me to deputize for him and embarked on the Atlantic Ocean with his men. That was the last we saw of him and all those who were with him, and so I became king in my own right. (Hopkins et al., 1981, pp. 268–269)

–– The story of the Malian king’s voyage as told by Mansa Musa to the governor of Old Cairo, Abū‘l-Ḥasan ‘Alı ̄ b. Amı ̄r Ḥājib We feel it is important with the values of our social justice education program and responsibility considering our subject for us to recognize our own positionalities as authors. “The truth about stories is, that’s all we are” (King, 2003, p. 2). We deeply internalize this quotation as we believe the truth in our oral tradition and hope it piques curiosity among the next generation and young racialized people to do their own investigation. King demonstrates how stories shape who we are and how we understand our relationships with one another. Oral traditions in many Black, Indigenous, and/or racialized cultures are valid forms of knowledge and often our defense against colonialism, against genocide, and against misappropriation. Our interest in this chapter comes from our personal experience and a systemic reality of having gone through the Canadian school system from JK–12 and post-­secondary education system. We approach this chapter from our positionalities as racialized students, born and raised in Southern Ontario, North America, and having gone through the Canadian education system and imbued a US-Centric/Eurocentric curriculum and White European male-dominant narrative of history. In this spirit, we start this chapter by sharing a little about ourselves. Individually we come from a wide range of positionalities. Jesse Ashiedu is a Nigerian-Canadian doctoral student in the Social Justice Education program at the University of Toronto. As a first-­ generation Canadian, Ashiedu’s research interests involve connecting both parts of his cultural identity to raise questions surrounding what it means to be of two cultures. Ashiedu is a member of the Enuani Igbo ethnic group of Southern Nigeria and incorporates Enuani Igbo history into his current research. As this chapter deals greatly with the history of the Keita dynasty, Ashiedu’s own research interests of exploring Igbo migration from the Benin empire to the towns that make up his ancestral home around the same period have encouraged a comparison between the corpora on different West African empires. Being born in Canada, Ashiedu

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seeks to explore the history of his homeland through historiographical research and analysis. Dhanela Sivaparan was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. She is of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage. She is a woman of color, daughter, writer, educator, emerging scholar and is pursuing her Ph.D. in the Social Justice Education program at the University of Toronto. In this chapter Dhanela offers an exploration of migration and colonial power dynamics relative to her positionality as a heterosexual first generation, navigating her journey in academic spaces. Her research interests lie at the intersection of identity, race, and space, and understanding how storytelling and cultural arts are transformative ways for healing and resilience for racialized communities. Dhanela’s goal is to inspire youth in her community to dream, write, build positive relationships, and share their lived experiences. In reflecting the above positionalities, based on our own background and career we find that we carry multiple complex positionalities. We are a marginalized class, racialized Black, and Brown researchers, pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Toronto, a privileged institution (historically these institutions were elite private universities). By using positionality, we also understand that we are defined not only by these attributes but also by our experiences, spiritual beliefs, and historical contexts that also factor into our shared positionality. In terms of our research, we acknowledge our positionality and life experiences, as racialized researchers influence social, cultural, and political factors of our research. bell hooks defines positionality as the context that shapes subjectivity: I have been working to change the way I speak and write, to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of place, of not just who I am in the present but where I am coming from, the multiple voices within me … [w]hen I say then that these worlds emerge from suffering, I refer to the personal struggle to name the location from which I come to voice—that space of theorizing. (hooks, 1989, pg. 16)

This inspiration helps us to shape our collective life experiences and reflect on our first-hand involvements in the education system as first-generation Canadian researchers where we ironically struggle for visibility, despite our national identity and schooling come from a place of privilege. Positionality, however, is not only limited to relationships between people. It works also to understand privilege: the canon of science, dominant Western colonial-­ dominated narratives upheld by White, upper class, males. This work is

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dedicated to protecting and celebrating Black and Brown lives and dismantling anti-Black racism in academia. In theory, 1492 marks the first encounter and widely published report of Columbus voyage, which made Columbus famous throughout the United States and Europe. This secured him the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea, rupturing a particular dogma. This year too marks the beginning of Indigenous people’s genocide in North America and ushered in the divide and conquer rule. This was the era that impacted what’s associated with Christopher Columbus in terms of violence and erasure of Indigenous and Black people’s history in this part of the world, which later becomes the Americas. Thus, with this knowledge we become critical of the status quo to show that other races of the Americas were here before Columbus landed on the shores of America. Our school curriculum hardly discussed the multiple histories and people prior to Christopher Columbus that may have come to North America. There is lack of exploration of African history, especially with respect to the continent’s past before Western contacts. The structure of African historiography studied in North America has been focused more on the Transatlantic Slave Trade than other episodes in African experiences. This utter disregard for African history in dominant historical discourses has created a distortion and/or gap in Africa’s historiographical scholarship. This has in turn sparked our conversation regarding decolonizing education and emphasizes learning of multiple histories to inform other young scholars who have taken the story of Columbus to be the baseline of all histories. As emerging scholars, we should be curious, critical, and suspicious of an education system that has distorted American and African realities.

A History of North American Voyages Throughout the world the discovery of North America has long often been attributed to Christopher Columbus; after his 1492 voyage, Columbus and his name became an integral part of the history of the Americas. First used by poets as an homage to the personified “Brittania,” the name “Columbia,” named after Columbus, came to signify all the Americas by the late eighteenth century and cities, rivers, states, and countries would all soon take their name from the Italian explorer (Schlereth, 1992). Columbus’ name came to signify all the Americas even though he landed in the Bahamas and did not set foot on the mainland for which he

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is so often credited with discovering. In fact, the first recorded celebration of Columbus’ “discovery” of North America took place in the form of Columbus Day on October 12, 1792, 300 years after Columbus’ original landing and such celebrations have continued up until this day (Speroni, 1948). In recent times, Columbus’ voyages have been subject of greater intellectual scrutiny. Although it is true that Columbus brought the Americas to the attention of Europe, it is also true that Columbus participated in genocide, with the Taino people of Ayiti being completely wiped out during the Spanish administration (Bigelow & Koning, 1991). Many Indigenous people who lived on the islands that Columbus first landed on were also sent to Spain as slaves, the majority of who died shortly after landing (Bigelow & Koning, 1991). As the brutal details of his voyages came to be known among the public, and the world gained a heightened sense of social justice, people would advocate to stop celebrating Columbus Day. In 1992, the first Indigenous People’s Day was celebrated in Berkeley, California, as opposed to Columbus Day, to honor the Indigenous people of the Americas and commemorate the lives that were lost because of Columbus’ voyage (UNC-Chapel Hill, 2019; Associated Press, 1992). Shortly after the first Columbus Day was celebrated, the idea that Columbus was not the first person to voyage to the Americas also came into the public consciousness. After the discovery of the remnants of Norse settlements dating back over 1000 years, which were found in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, evidence was now available to corroborate the Vinland Sagas: Norse oral histories that documented the voyages of Leif Eiriksson, a Norse explorer, now widely credited with being the first European to voyage to the Americas (Wallace, 2005). The search for the validation of Leif Eiriksson and the proponents of Columbus Day are justified as ways to instill pride in both Scandinavian-­ North Americans and Italian-North Americans. Those who do not wish to see Columbus Day abolished are largely Italian Americans, who claim Columbus Day is an important part of their ethnic heritage and instills pride while combating racism (Martone, 2016, pp.  161–163). In Scandinavian communities, Leif Eiriksson Day is celebrated on October 12 as opposed to Columbus Day, and in 1874, Professor Rasmus Bjørn Anderson of the University of Wisconsin was already championing Norsemen as “the first Americans” to encourage Scandinavian integration, appreciation, and acceptance within American society (Mancini, 2002).

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While the voyages of Columbus and Eiriksson have become ingrained in public consciousness and these men have become heroes to the communities they represent, other voyages to the Americas across the ocean have been largely discredited and have not been explored by the academic community. One voyage which took place nearly 200 years before Columbus was the voyage of a Malian King, or Mansa, who lived in the fourteenth century. However, this voyage has continued to be a source of contention and debate. The identity of this Malian voyager is also a topic of debate among the academic community. While we know that this ruler would have had to come before Mansa Musa in 1312, the famed richest man to have ever lived, due to the complexity of succession and abdication in the Keita dynasty, the identity of this ruler has been called into question. This voyage from West Africa was first brought to the academic world at large as possibly having made landfall in North America by Ivan Van Sertima in 1976 with his seminal book titled They Came Before Columbus. Twenty-four years later, in the year 2000, the subject of Africans in pre-­ Columbian Americas was brought to the forefront once more in the BBC article, “Africa’s Greatest Explorer.” With this idea once again entering the public discourse, more claims as to why it would be impossible poured out from the academic world. Dismissals of possible African achievements and origins have been consistent throughout the centuries with claims such as Africans did not build the pyramids. However, life in West Africa during the time of Mansa Musa, the Malian King who first told us the story of the voyage from West Africa across the Atlantic, was sufficiently advanced in the ways of astronomy, metallurgy, navigation, architecture, garment fashioning, and governance, among many other fields. By examining what life was like during the Keita dynasty and the story of one of the most famous African navigators, we will explore the question of whether an African made it to the Americas before Columbus.

Who Was “Africa’s Greatest Explorer”? The idea that Africans do not have a sense of curiosity is one that has been pervasive in the analysis of transatlantic oceanic journeys. In addition to this, the idea that a Malian Prince could have reached the Americas is also further suppressed by the conflicting and confusing nature of succession and abdication within the Keita dynasty. One of the foremost scholars on the Keita dynasty and Islamic-African texts was Nehemia Levtzion (1935–2003). Nehemia Levtzion was a

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professor in the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as the president of the Open University of Israel from 1987 to 1992, widely if not exclusively cited by other scholars about Keita dynasty. The scholarly work of Levtzion has been widely acclaimed, with many of his publications, translations, and books such as Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants (2003), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (2001), and Ancient Ghana and Mali (1973) serving as a backbone for what we in the academic community know of medieval West Africa, among many other Islamic-African subjects. Accounts of the Malian kingships from the Keita dynasty in the fourteenth century have mainly been preserved in Arabic, and the most relevant sources come from Ibn-Khaldun, Ibn-Battuta, and Ibn Fadl-Allah (Levtzion, 1963). For centuries, historians have tried to piece together the complex dynastic line of the Keita dynasty. The identity of Abu-Bakr II has long been conflated with his relative Mansa Qu, and the two names had often been used interchangeably until more research and analysis had been made into the Arabic texts (Bell, 1972). Much of the confusion regarding the life of Abu-Bakr II also came from the fact that he shared a name with his nephew, Abu-Bakr I (Levtzion, 1963). The numerals after the names of both members of the royal family were added by historians as means of differentiation and did not refer to their actual titles (Levtzion, 1963). The issue regarding the identification of the Malian King in the account given by Mansa Musa lies in the fact that the king in question was not mentioned by name. Many historians have tried to create an established history of the Keita dynasty, with Nehemia Levtzion providing his analysis of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century kings (Fig. 2.1). Various works such as that of Ivan Van Sertima’s, They Came Before Columbus, have named Abu-Bakr II as the king who reigned before Mansa Musa. Levtzion’s work finding mistranslations of Arabic texts allowed for his claim that Abu-Bakr II never reigned in Mali, as Mansa Musa was the first ruler of the new branch of the ruling dynasty (Levtzion, 1963). According to Levtzion, Abu-Bakr II never ruled, and he was likely the grandfather of Mansa Musa and the grand-uncle of Abu-Bakr I. Thus, the identity of the ruler who allowed Mansa Musa to come to power becomes unclear. As seen in Fig. 2.1, Mansa Musa was the ninth Mansa of Mali and was proceeded by Mansa Muhammad. Would this then make Mansa Muhammad the voyager in Mansa Musa’s story? There is relatively little information available on the life of Mansa Muhammad. It is

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Fig. 2.1  The genealogy of the kings of Mali based on the chronicle of IbnKhaldun (Levtzion, 1963)

also important to note that Mansa Musa is referred to as the son of Abu-­ Bakr in Ibn-Khaldun’s historical account, and Levtzion clarified that the Arabic text dictates that the kingship passed from the sons of Mari Jata (Sundiata) to the sons of his brother Abu-Bakr, but this reference to sons most likely means descendants (Bell, 1972). This would mean that the kingship would have passed directly from Mansa Muhammad to Mansa Musa, seemingly indicating that Mansa Muhammad was the ruler in Mansa Musa’s story. Levtzion indicates that in the chronicle of Ibn-Khaldun, Abu-Bakr was never king, and he was brother to Mari-Djata and father of Faga-Laye, who in turn was the father of Mansa Musa, who was the first king of Abu-­ Bakr I’s line (Levtzion, 1973, p. 71). For this reason, it is likely that the ruler in Mansa Musa’s story is Mansa Muhammed, as has been commonly accepted.

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The lack of additional sources aside from the chronicle of al-Umari, in addition to mistakes in translation, created an air of mystery around the kings of the Keita dynasty. However, until additional sources are found or oral traditions that are not available to the public become publicly available, one may still speculate on the complex life of a Mansa in the Keita dynasty as well as the technological advancements made during that time. Rather than focusing on did it happen, we can now discuss how it could have happened, and how life was during the time of the voyager king.

Life During the Keita Dynasty The Keita dynasty took power during a tumultuous period in Mali’s history. Sunjata informant: Mamary Kouyate recorded in Kolokani, August 16, 1975, thus: You know, the days of Magan Sunjata had their origins in the time of Sumanguru, because there was going to be a change in leadership. This Magan Sunjata’s mother was Jume Je. Jume Je was carrying a big stomach for thirty months. When she gave birth in Mande, her offspring was lame for seven years, seven months and seven days in Mande. People became worried because he had not begun to walk. Sunjata’s mother went to some blacksmiths and had them make a staff of iron to help him stand. Thirty young blacksmiths made an iron crutch and gave it to Sunjata. But when he tried to stand up, he bent the iron. Forty young blacksmiths made another iron staff and gave it to him. When he tried to stand and walk, he bent this one also. That day, his mother purchased great strength and gave it to him. Eh! The charm of the son was from the father, but the strength was from the mother. Sunjata’s mother broke a piece of wood from the garden and gave it to him, saying, “Magan, thirty young blacksmiths made an iron staff for you to walk with, but you were not able. Forty young blacksmiths made another iron stuff, and you still could not lean on it to walk. I am going to give you a piece of wood from the garden. Since I have been your father’s wife, if I have jumped the feet of another man,* no man or woman will ever see you walk in Mande. But if I have never jumped the feet of another man, you will walk in Mande among other men and women.” Then Sunjata stood up and walked with the piece of wood containing the strength his mother had purchased him. She swears by her fidelity to his father. (Conrad, 1981, p. i)

From this story, there is much inspiration we can draw from the Malian society. The contrast drawn between the iron stuff crafted by the dozens of blacksmiths and the simple piece of wood taken from the garden and

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imbued with strength by Sunjata’s mother Jume Je is striking; a mother can work miracles where others cannot. This alone highlights the respect shown and power attributed to motherhood. Jume Je swearing by her fidelity to her husband also gives insight into Malian ideas of morality and marriage; she is faithful to Sunjata’s father, and because she is faithful, she and her child are rewarded. In this story we are also able to see a lesson that is included, like many African parables. The story tells those who are listening that those who are righteous and faithful will be rewarded. Conversely, in the fact that Jume Je also says that if she has been unfaithful no one will ever see Sunjata walk, we are told that those who are not faithful or righteous are punished. While there is much that has been learned and is still being learned through oral history, much like in the previous excerpt, a great deal of what we know regarding life in Mali during the Keita dynasty comes from Shihab al-Din al-’Umari, Ibn-Battuta, and Ibn-Khaldun. The first king mentioned by Ibn-Khaldun is Barmandana, Mali’s first Muslim ruler (Levtzion, 1973, p. 56). The next king and perhaps the most famous of Malian Kings mentioned by Ibn-Khaldun was Mari-Djata, also identified as Sunjata (Sundiata) the founder of the empire of Mali according to oral traditions. When one discusses the topic of the most popular Malian King, the answer differs when referring to the written or oral tradition. While Mansa Musa was the favorite king of the Muslim scholars, he has a very small role in the oral tradition when compared with the dynasties founder Sunjata. This is perhaps since Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca reverberated throughout the entire Muslim world at the time. The information available on life during the Keita dynasty only focuses primarily on Mansa Musa and his descendants. The most important source of living archives from life during the Keita dynasty lies with the griots or djelis of Mali. Mansa Musa’s reign is often considered the Golden age of Mali. As touched upon, how he came to power is a point of contention among scholars. The Keita dynasty was marred with tales of succession and ascension, filled with coups and periods of weak and strong leadership. The ascension of Kings during the Keita dynasty passed in many ways. When examining the historical record, historians have suggested that succession passed from father to son, brother to brother, and uncle to nephew, among other ways. Kings who were able to link their lineage to famous kings in the Malian dynasty such as Sunjata and Mansa Musa were able to solidify and improve their claim to the throne (Levtzion, 1973, p. 69).

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Life for the people during the Keita dynasty was largely defined by the strength of their King as well as the solidity of leadership and validity of regal claim. Mansa Mari-Djata (not Sunjata), for example, was thought to have been a weak ruler who drained the treasury and weakened the government (Levtzion, 1963). It is said that Mansa Musa and his brother Mansa Sulayman brought the empire to its peak but the succeeding generations and the infighting among the different royal branches led to the end of the empire (Levtzion, 1963). During the empire’s peak in the fourteenth century, Mali also attracted immigration from places all over the world. During Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca, he was accompanied home by descendants of the prophet Muhammad along with the great architect Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Al-Sahili, who was also a poet from Andalusia (Levtzion, 1973, p. 213). Al-Sahili is credited with building a magnificent palace for Mansa Musa in the capital, as well as the great mosque of Timbuktu (Hunwick, 1990). The palace that Al-Sahili had built Mansa Musa was rectangular in shape and covered in plaster that was decorated with colorful designs, marking the introduction of an architectural style that can still be seen in many towns and cities of the Western Sudan (Conrad, 2010, p. 40). In addition to the new architectural style in the years that followed Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage from Mecca, Egyptian traders became frequent visitors to Mali and the many Malian cultural centers such as Walata became popular trading spots, with the Malian citizens of Walata starting to dress in clothes imported from Egypt (Conrad, 2010, p. 41). What we know of the kingdom of Mali and its capital, Walata, as described by the Arabic records of the fourteenth century was a rather complex civilization. According to al-`Umari by way of Sheikh al-Dukkali, the capital of Mali was spread over a large area and filled with scattered conical houses built of clay with roofs of wood and reed (Levtzion, 1973, p.  61). Al-`Umari goes on to describe the palace of the King as being made up of several different units grouped together and encircled by a long, large wall. Ibn-Khaldun also describes the Malian capital as expansive, well-watered, cultivated, and populated with brisk markets and an area for caravans to stop for trading from the Maghrib, Ifriqiyah, and Egypt, and wares would be brought from every country (Levtzion, 1973, p. 61) (Fig. 2.2). Much of the expansion of the city was brought on by the ambitions of Mansa Musa. During this time Mali also continued the exchange of embassies with Morocco (Levtzion, 1973, p. 66). During the fourteenth century,

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Fig. 2.2  The kingdoms of Ghana and Mali, dated ca. 1050, ca. 1300, and ca. 1500 (Levtzion, 1973, p. 2)

the empire of Mali extended from Lower Senegal and The Gambia rivers in the west, all the way into Songhay country on the Niger below Gao in the East, and then from upper Niger in the South to the edge of the Sahara in the North (Levtzion, 1973, p. 73). During this time, Mali became the first empire in the Western Sudan to extend its rule over both sides of the Niger Bend and into territories that had formerly belonged to other kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Ghana and the Songhay (Levtzion, 1973, p. 73). Mali would then begin its urban transformation during the second half of the fourteenth century as Timbuktu would slowly replace Walata as the center of trans-Saharan trade (Levtzion, 1973, p. 80). Cowries, which are shells fished in the Indian Ocean, were imported to the Western Sudan as early as the eleventh century (Levtzion, 1973, pp. 120–121). It was noted by Ibn-Battuta that the people of the Mali empire used cowrie shells to carry out transactions, both for purchases and for sales (Levtzion, 1973, p.  121). Large-scale and long-distance trade, however, continued to be made with gold (Levtzion, 1973, p. 122). During the fourteenth-century Mali empire, the peasant population of Mali was free to continue their day-to-day activities so that they could supply food for warriors during times of conflict (Levtzion, 1973, p. 112).

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Levtzion (1973) describes the caste system that the peasant population and the royal family were a part of as serving key roles in the kingdom. Levtzion goes on to note that there existed noble clans such as the royal family, as well as different peasant castes such as blacksmiths, artisans, weavers, and cobblers. In addition to these castes and roles there was also another very important role in Mali society. This role still exists today in organizing the historical events of the Malian Kingdom. This court official referred often in historical sources as the djeli and more commonly today as a griot was a bard or a spokesman (Levtzion, 1973, p. 113). These djelis are the keepers of Malian oral tradition. Agricultural technology in the Sudanic savannah was one of the most developed in West Africa due to the plentiful rainfall (Levtzion, 1973, p. 117). Agricultural technology during this time was based on the hoe as the principal tool as well as burning the vegetation for fertilizing (Levtzion, 1973, p. 117). Farmers during the Keita dynasty would always produce a surplus as an exchange for goods they may require, as well as taxation, which was used for paying for the army and administration of the central government (Levtzion, 1973, p. 117). Slaving of people who practiced Indigenous African religions in the surrounding areas was a large contributor to the construction of the Keita dynasty (Levtzion, 1973, p.  118). The principal ethnic groups of the fourteenth-­century Mali empire were the Malinke, Bambara, and Soninke, who were agriculturalists that cultivated millet, sorghum, and fonio (Levtzion, 1973, p. 117). Production of agricultural goods was typically increased by expanding the cultivated land, which was done by the exploitation of labor through slavery (Levtzion, 1973, p. 117). During this time, these slaves had a form of upward mobility. The best example of this was the slave who became a general in the Royal Court of the Keita dynasty and then eventually overthrew the current King and became a king himself, Mansa Sakura, who was by all accounts good and fair (Levtzion, 1973, p. 65). Mansa Sakura ruled for ten years before he was then ambushed and killed by allies of the royal family and power again transferred from Sakura back to the Keita dynasty (Levtzion, 1973, p. 65). The societal structure of the Keita dynasty during the fourteenth century was complex with many variables that could affect one’s life. They had complex means of trade, a firm understanding of blacksmithing, architecture, and agriculture, as well as relationships with other countries within Africa, Asia, and Europe. In this next section, the question of whether they could have reached the Americas will be explored.

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Could West African’s Have Reached the Americas? In the sixth chapter of Michael A. Gomez’, 2018 book African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa, the question of whether Malian sailors could have reached the Americas was explored. Gomez posits that it was not possible that coastal populations anywhere in any Kingdom at any time would have failed to at least think about the possibility of exploring the oceans near to them. During this time, the Malian empire was already engaged in inter- and intracontinental relations through merchants, pilgrimages, and ambassadors. The empire had developed relationships with North and East Africa, as well as Southern Europe and Asia. The Keita dynasty would have been aware of these areas clearly as the famous Andalusian poet and architect Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Al-Sahili was after all a resident of the Malian Kingdom. While the fabled North American voyage may have been the most famous, other oceanic expeditions and encounters were also recorded by the great Muslim scholars of that age. In Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (2000) several Muslim scholars reference early oceanic expeditions. Moroccan-born Muslim scholar Al-Idrisi is the creator of perhaps the most famous medieval map and world description, Nuzhat al-mushtaq, a world map consisting of North Africa and Eurasia (Harley & Woodward, 1992, pp. 156–161). Al-Idrisi writes of a voyage of boats traveling to the Island of Awlil, a North African island famous for its salt deposit, to collect salt (Hopkins & Levtzion, 2000, pp. 106–107). Al-Idrisi notes that these boats would then proceed up the Nile to Sila, Takrur, Barisa, Ghana, as well as other towns and regions of the Sudan. Al-Idrisi also discussed fisherman fishing for coral at Sabta, what is now Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous city on the North coast of Africa bordering Morocco, where this coral would be extracted from all over the sea and polished before being fashioned into beads (Hopkins & Levtzion, 2000, p. 130). Al-Idrisi also tells of a group of eight adventurers, or mugharraun, traveling across the Sea of Darkness or the Western Sea from Lisbon to discover its contents and understand where it ended (Hopkins & Levtzion, 2000, p. 130). While there are no dates on this account, Al-Idrisi lived from 1100 to 1165, which means the events of the voyage must have occurred sometime during or before this period.

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Eight men, all cousins, participated in equipping a cargo ship into which they put water and supplies to suffice them for months, then they put to sea at the first blowing of the east wind and sailed before it for about eleven days, till they reached a sea with rough waves, a bad smell, many reefs, and little light. They thought that they would certainly perish, so they turned their sails on to the other tack and continued voyaging towards the south for twelve days, till they came upon the Isle of Sheep. There are sheep there of which the number cannot be known whether by count or estimation (tahsil). They pasture freely without shepherd or overseer. They made for this island and disembarked there. They found a spring of running water, over which was a wild fig tree. They took some of those sheep and slaughtered them but found their flesh to be bitter and no one could eat it. So they took some of their skins and travelled on towards the south for twelve days until they sighted an island, where they perceived building and cultivation, so they made for it to see what was there. They were not far away when they were surrounded by boats there and taken and carried in their ship to a city on the seacoast, where they were lodged in a house. In this place they saw reddish-brown men with thin lank locks and of tall stature. Their women were amazingly beautiful. (Hopkins & Levtzion, 2000, pp. 130–131)

It is important to note that these Andalusian adventurers encountered seafaring people, based on the swiftness with which their boat was accosted. Where exactly the adventurers from Lisbon landed is unclear; however, one can further hypothesize as Al-Idrisi adds more to the account. They were embarked on a boat and their eyes were bandaged and they were carried over the sea for a certain time. The people said: “We estimated that we were carried for three days and nights until we were brought to the mainland. We were taken out and handcuffed from behind and left on the shore until the next day dawned and the sun rose. We were in an unfortunate predicament through the tightness of the handcuffs until we heard tumult and men’s voices, so we all cried out together and the people came towards us and found us in that bad situation. They released us from our bonds and questioned us and we told them who we were. They were Berbers. One of them said to us: ‘Do you know how far it is between you and your country?’ We said: ‘No.’ He said: ‘Between you and your country there is a distance of two months.’ The leader of the group said: ‘Wa asafi!’ so the place has been called Asafi to this day.” It is the port in the Farthest West which we have mentioned above. (Hopkins & Levtzion, 2000, pp. 130–131)

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The land, Asafi, now called Safi, which is a port of Morocco, is said to be two months away from Lisbon in Al-Idrisi’s account. In addition, the men posit that the island that they landed on was a three-day journey from this Moroccan port, meaning that they must have been on an island somewhere off of North or West Africa. These adventurers would be a preface to the cultural exchange that would come to exist between the Muslim Andalusian communities in Europe, Morocco, Egypt, and the Malian empire over the next three centuries, where there would be much migration between these places. While seafaring may have been common in Northern Africa, further south, West Africans were also experienced on the water. However, Gomez (2018) highlights major technological barriers to a successful mission to North America. Gomez notes that the navy of the Malian Kingdom during this time would have been ill-suited to an oceanic voyage of this nature (Gomez, 2018, p. 103). West African naval crafts during the fourteenth century consisted largely of canoes or pirogues, a type of boat constructed from hollowed out trees, boats that would make long oceanic voyages treacherous (Gomez, 2018, p.  103). These vessels would have perhaps presented an obstacle to making a voyage across the Atlantic. Another barrier that might have presented itself would have been the Canary current, as likely described in Musa’s story. Much of the seafaring journeys conducted along Africa’s west and north coasts were done through currents of water that facilitate and dictate routes of travel. One such current was the Canary current. The Canary current, as described by Gomez, is a “year-round movement of water flowing south along the West African coast from what is now southern Morocco to Guinea; then westward in the form of the Equatorial Currents to the Gulf of Mexico, where they become the Gulf Stream; then back across the Atlantic toward Europe and North and West Africa, its southern branch developing into the Canary Current, renewing the cycle” (Gomez, 2018, p.  102). Gomez continues to elaborate that the Canary current both facilitated navigation from the North, while inhibiting navigation from the South, making it much easier for those who wish to travel from Andalusia and North Africa to West Africa than for West Africans wishing to travel across the Atlantic. Gomez notes that while those traveling south would be able to ride the current, those wishing to travel through the current could be pulled violently off course. But if those African ships did get past the current, the question remains of whether they would be able to survive the Atlantic. In Musa’s story, the 2000 ships that the king readied are not described in any

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detail. However, it is not difficult to assume that these ships would be specially built differently for this voyage, with it undoubtedly being much longer and the first of its kind.

Was It Really Impossible? When stating that for Africans to reach the Americas would have been impossible especially without the help of sails or other technological innovations, it would perhaps be wise to consider the journeys of Aleksander Doba. Doba is a Polish adventurer who set the world record in 2014 for the longest open-water unassisted kayak crossing of the Atlantic in history (National Geographic Adventure, 2015). Doba made this journey only using his arm strength, in a single person 23-foot Kayak, weighing over 1000 lbs from Lisbon, Portugal, the same spot as those Andalusian adventures almost 1000 years ago, all the way to Florida, arriving six months later (National Geographic Adventure, 2015). Previously he had made a similar Kayak journey from Dakar, Senegal, what would have been part of the Malian empire 700 years ago, all the way to Acarau, Brazil (Potts, 2015). While Doba may have had a superior vessel, as well as greater access to sailing knowledge and techniques, he at least proved it is possible to get from West coast of Africa, past the Canary current, all the way to South America, using only one’s own strength, without the aid of sails, huge crews, massive vessels, or modern-day technology. When considering this, one must at least entertain the idea that if an expedition set out from the Malian empire, they would have the possibility of reaching the Americas.

Evidence Pointing Toward West Africans in the Americas In public school, we learned that Christopher Columbus discovered America. This dominant history influenced the theory that the first Africans to reach the Americas were brought as slaves from the ships of European colonists. This story of African bodies portrayed in our dominant history books as the eternal slave of the White man is embedded in the dominant ideology, creating the ideology of Whites over Blacks. Europeans had constructed a massive fabric of historical lies and deletion to uphold colonialism, slavery, and oppression. Furthermore, these lies airbrushed colonial atrocities and imperialism to justify the notion that

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the White man had to civilize other races. Therefore, racism is constructed and is an ideology, created largely by European theorists, historians, scientists, and scholars with the purpose of erasing the truth and to keep the master/slave narrative alive. Here, Van Sertima (1976, p.  255) undermines the notion of discovery: It would be an irony, indeed, to find that Americans “discovered” Europe many centuries before Europeans “discovered” America. But the whole notion of any race (European, African, or American) discovering a full-­ blown civilization is absurd. They presume some innate superiority in the “discoverer” and something inferior and barbaric in the people “discovered.” … What I have sought to prove is not that Africans “discovered” America, but that they made contact on at least half a dozen occasions, two of which were culturally significant for Americans.

Van Sertima (1976) points to evidence showing that the cultures, language, and ceremonies of Mandigos merged with ancient Americans. He argues that the first evidence of a Black presence in America was given to Columbus by Indigenous people, who provided evidence to the Spanish that they were trading with Black people: The Indians of this Espanola said there had come to Espanola a black people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they called gua-nin, of which he (Columbus) had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper. The origin of the word gua-nin may be tracked down in the Mande languages of West Africa, through Mandigo, Kabunga, Toronka, Kankanka, Banbara, Mande and Vei. In Vei, we have the form of the word ka-ni which, transliterated into native phonetics, would give us gua-nin. (Van Sertima, 1976, p. 11)

Many European explorers, including Columbus, are reported to have witnessed Black people in the Americas when they reached the area. In 1515, for example, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a Spanish explorer, led an expedition in search of gold where he sighted the Pacific Ocean. He stated in a letter that he had witnessed Black men held as prisoners of war in an Indian settlement. When Balboa questioned the Indigenous people where the Black men came from, they had replied that Blacks lived nearby and were constantly waging war. Peter Martyr, a Spanish historian, reported in the 1500s that the men were shipwrecked Africans. Fray Gregoria Garcia,

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a priest who wrote an account of another encounter in his book, was silenced by the Spanish Inquisition: “Here we found slaves of the lord— Negroes—who were the first our people saw in the Indies” (Van Sertima, 1976, p. 22). There is also archeological evidence that may point to the presence of Africans in pre-Columbian times. These were in the form of realistic portraits of Black-Africans in clay, gold, and stone unearthed in pre-­Columbian strata in Central and South America (Sertima, 1976, pp.  23–24). Van Sertima’s report suggested that there was slavery and colonization was not the beginning of African contact to the West. The oral history of a Malian King who set out on a great expedition of large boats in the early fourteenth century discusses the history of African curiosity and resilience in navigation and exploration of the world. Remembering that the Malian King who set sail did not return impacted the voyage has had in the context of Canada. Then there is also the oral history of griots or storytellers. And, curiously around this time, there is possible evidence of contact between West Africans and Mexicans that appears in strata in America in a combination of artifacts and cultural parallels: A black-haired, black-bearded figure in white robes, one of the representations of Quetzalcoatl, modeled on a dark-skinned outsider, appears in paintings in the valley of Mexico … while the Aztecs begin to worship a Negroid figure mistaken for their god Tezcatlipoca because he had the right ceremonial color. Negroid skeletons are found in this time stratum in the Caribbean. … ‘A notable tale is recorded in the Peruvian traditions … of how black men coming from the east had been able to penetrate the Andes Mountains.’ (Van Sertima, 1976, p. 26)

A Malian expedition to the Americas, Van Sertima noted, may not be as daunting as it seems for anyone who understands ocean currents. These currents, which traverse the world’s oceans, serve as natural marine conveyor belts: “Once you enter them you are transported (even against your will, even with no navigational skill) from one bank of the ocean to the other” (Van Sertima, 1976, pp.  22–23). In addition, this demonstrates that it was possible to cross the Atlantic from West Africa to South America. The artifacts documenting Africans in the West date back more than 3000 years to the Olmec civilization. Researchers have found massive head statues in the Olmec heartland with African characteristics (Van Sertima, 1976, pp.  30–31). Alexander Von Wuthnau was an archeologist who

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researched the Olmec civilization and ancient Mesoamerican cultures. His collections include African portraiture in clay stone and jadeite from around 1500 BCE. Such early pre-colonial artifacts dismiss the theory that all Africans came to the Americas as initially enslaved people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus, the possibility for such artifacts confirming an African presence in the Americas before European contact. Van Sertima also referenced “the existence in Mesoamerica of stone and terracotta images as unmistakably African” (Van Sertima, 1976), reinforcing that there was an African presence in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. He further pointed to evidence to support his views that these Black people were not slaves but merchants and priests who were honored and revered by the Indigenous people in the North Americas, who built statues in their honor. Van Sertima discusses that the history of Egypt helped to demonstrate that the Nubian rulers of ancient Egypt’s 25th dynasty organized an expedition that sailed across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the Gulf Coasts of Mexico, where they came into contact with the Olmecs (Van Sertima, 1976, p. 241). According to Van Sertima, the Olmecs willingly accepted the Nubian leaders of this expedition as rulers and so they influenced the creation of the Olmec civilization, which also inspired all the other civilizations that followed (Van Sertima, 1976, p. 244). The seizure of resources, lives, and land is a symbol of the global system of injustice. The history of resistance and rebellion in what is commonly known as the Americas epitomizes a people’s movement among the working and middle class trying to create a more equitable nation. As it is through understanding our narratives and history, do we begin to understand who we are. Van Sertima’s use of oral histories highlights the knowledge of Africans who were the first to navigate the ocean waters. Van Sertima posits as to what an announcement of this Malian voyage would have looked like: To all those who fished and sailed in lakes and rivers and off the sea’s great coasts, to all those who know about boats and water currents and wind currents and direction-finding by the map of the stars. To all those who know about Marine Engineering and Nautical Sciences. Let the Somono people come forward, to whom Sundiata had given “the monopoly of the water.” Let the Bozo people come forward, who are known as great boatmen of the Niger river. Call unto the boatmen of the Gambia and Senegal rivers. Call unto the people of Lake Chad, where it was said that men still built boats on

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the principles of the ancient Egyptians. Let it be known that they were all needed at the royal court of the Mali Empire. (Van Sertima, 1976, pp. 136–137)

Van Sertima’s work tried to disrupt and question the racist scholarship of his time. The evidence and events above point to the possibility of African explorations influenced the civilization of the Americas. There was evidence of at least the possibility of Malian contact with Indigenous people in North America, and this goes against the dominant ideology of what we are taught about African people and cultures only having traveled to North America on European ships. African history is overlooked by the dominant ideology and reflects a disdain for African culture, invention, exploration, and/or resourcefulness.

The Global West’s Disdain Resourcefulness

for African

The Global West has a widely accepted a narrative of African people in North America that goes like this: Africans were only brought to North America by force, having been abducted by colonial Europeans to be slaves in North America. Van Sertima (1976) and other scholars have argued, with varying degree of credibility, that the Chinese, the Irish, the Polish, and the Phoenicians, among others, reached these shores first as slaves. Van Sertima stated in a discussion: “I am not trying to prove that Africans created American culture. … I am trying to prove that contact was made between the two cultures and that significant contributions were made by the Africans” (Van Sertima, 1976). Thus, this story that the Global West has widely accepted is purposefully constructed to mislead people. It ignores the possibility that some African cultures like the Ancient Mali empire’s culture as seafarers could have enabled them to visit North America and had relationships with Indigenous people in North America. Moreover, Van Sertima’s discussion about African encounter in America sparks a conversation of an African influence on the Indigenous populations, not that the Africans came and taught the Indigenous people everything about civilization. Western mainstream scholars and historians regard the Aborigines in North America as having been essentially free of cross-cultural contamination until 1492 (Stengel, 2000, p. 2). What continues to be conservatively taught about North America’s people in the Western institutions is the

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Bering Strait land-bridge theory, which posits that no humans inhabited the Americas before about 14,000 years ago when the glacial ice sheets allowed for migration from Asia to North America (Stengel, 2000). Jack Forbes explains the prevailing winds and Gulf Stream currents that would easily enable travel from the Americas to Europe or Africa to the Americas (Forbes, 1993. p. 7). He reports that Columbus noted multi-­ colored scarves identical to the scarves from Sierra Leone (Africa) in Haiti, but believed such long-distance contact was impossible, even though he had been told by these people that “black people had come from the south and southeast and that their spear heads were made of a brass or bronze-­ like mixture of gold, silver, and copper” (Forbes, 1993, p. 7). Thus, Van Sertima’s work builds on this to examine the intersection of Indigenous and African material culture, including textiles, plants, sculpted images, navigation, and ship-building accounts were present. Even if that turns out to not be the case historically, the fact that there is oral evidence to support this story, and the fact that this story is not widely told in history, or our education system shows a profound disdain for the depth, innovation, and diversity of the multiple histories of African cultures before European colonization. Van Sertima presents this evidence: “The African presence in America before Columbus is of importance not only to African and American history but to the history of the world civilizations. It provides further evidence that all great civilizations and races are heavily indebted to one another and that no race has a monopoly on enterprise and inventive genius” (Van Sertima, 1976). Further, Van Sertima claims that Black African expeditions, including one led by a King from the Kingdom of Mali in the 1300s to the North American continent long before European expeditions, are possible (Van Sertima, 1976). He describes two examples of Africans in contact with the Americas before Europe. The first significant period of contact is by Nubians of the 25th dynasty in Egypt, and the second is by the Mandingo around 1310 CE (Van Sertima, 1976). These two periods marked important cultural impact on the civilization of the Olmecs, who, it is widely accepted, were the predecessors of the later great Central American civilizations (Van Sertima, 1976). This reminds us that the idea of Africans as seafaring peoples has been buried and dismissed along with other ideas of African resourcefulness. Africa was a thriving continent before European colonization and enslavement in North America. As mentioned in the above sections, the Kingdom of Mali had control of trade. The Kingdom of Mali grew rich

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and was powerful with organized governance and leadership. Malian Kingdom added many important trading routes, including Timbuktu, Djenne, and Gao, to its empire (Van Sertima, 1976). Religion was also vital during the Mansa Musa era. The stories of Mali’s wealth and religion spread far and wide. The architectural advances in cities like Timbuktu and an organized government, an emphasis on education, and expansion of trade show the way the West has looked at Africa is part of a particular association of falsehood and disdain. Africa had its civilization and was producing knowledge and striving before slavery and colonization. The African voyager’s history is one encounter of exploration to the West. The major reason for the disdain of African contributions and peoples is the desire for control by the dominant European powers. Africans are seen as incapable of achievements, so the possibility of an African explorer is seen as impossible by the West. Therefore, Columbus’ story, as the first point of contact, is used to deflate all other ideas of contact to the Americas that came before him. Thus, the West’s affront against African history and resourcefulness has been systemic, institutionalized, and structural. This has been the lived reality since the first Africans were enslaved and taken to North America. Despite the abolition of slavery in North America and the Civil Rights Movement, the African Diaspora has suffered the consequences of an economic, political, and social system that glorifies and privileges Whiteness and uses violence to limit the rights, economic, and survival opportunities of Black people. It turns out that there is incredibly a wide variety of stories we could tell the history of African cultures that will show how disdainful and false the normalized North American and “White” history of Africa is. The fact that such seafaring African expeditions and narratives are never discussed in most North American or Western educational contexts, we must conclude that in the Western educational system there is a deep disregard for the breadth of African cultures and knowledges. In short, we must remember to as young, and racialized people to; disrupt colonial narratives, find ways to identify misleading stories told about African histories, and find ways to demonstrate the falsity of the usual stories that are told about African history. The Ghanaian/Twi word “Sakofa” means “returning to retrieve what has been forgotten”; this empowers us to see the importance of reclaiming African history and decolonizing knowledge to re-educate ourselves and others to be critical and curious of what we hear, including the peoples and ideas behind those histories.

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Conclusion This chapter’s goal was not to prove that Malians concretely arrived in the Americas during the fourteenth century, but rather to affirm that it was possible. Historically, the abilities and achievements of Africans have been underestimated whether that is through questions being thrown at the validity of their great civilizations or through doubts being levied on their achievements. This chapter, therefore, seeks to add to the growing literature on the wider history of Africa so that recognition toward African role in world history will continue to be produced both by its people and by the Western world. The story of the Malian king who ventured across the Atlantic will undoubtedly be a source of discussion for years to come. The Kingdom of Mali was complex in all facets, and the idea that an expedition of this nature took place needs to be considered. While we continue to learn more about the dynasty itself and life of the people during the fourteenth-­century West Africa, more details on how this voyage could have taken place will continue to emerge.

References Associated Press. (1992). In Berkeley, day for Columbus is renamed. The New York Times, [online]. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.nytimes. com/1992/01/12/us/in-­berkeley-­day-­for-­columbus-­is-­renamed.html Bell, N. M. (1972). The age of Mansa Musa of Mali: Problems in succession and chronology. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 5(2), 221–234. Bigelow, B., & Koning, H. (1991). Columbus in the classroom. In Columbus: His enterprise: Exploding the myth (pp.  123–140). NYU Press. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qftv6.15 Conrad, D. C. (1981). The role of oral artists in the history of Mali (Doctoral dissertation, SOAS University of London). Conrad, D. C. (2010). Empires of medieval West Africa: Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. Infobase Publishing. Forbes, J. D. (1993). Africans and native Americans: The language of race and the evolution of Red-Black Peoples. University of Illinois Press. Gomez, M. (2018). African dominion: A new history of empire in early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton University Press. Harley, J.  B., & Woodward, D. (1992). The history of cartography, volume 2. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-226-31635-2

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hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. Boston: South End Press. Hopkins, J. F., Hopkins, P., & Levtzion, N. (1981). Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history. Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, J. F., & Levtzion, N. (Eds.). (2000). Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history. Markus Wiener Publishers. Hunwick, J. O. (1990). An Andalusian in Mali: A contribution to the biography of Abū Ishāq al-Sāhilı ̄, c. 1290–1346. Paideuma, 59–66. King, T. (2003). The truth about stories: A native narrative. House of Anansi Press. Levtzion, N. (1963). The thirteenth-and fourteenth-century kings of Mali. The Journal of African History, 4(3), 341–353. Levtzion, N. (1973). Ancient Ghana and Mali. Africana Publishing Company. Mancini, J. (2002). Discovering Viking America. Critical Inquiry, 28(4), 868–907. https://doi.org/10.1086/341238 Martone, E. (Ed.). (2016). Italian Americans: The history and culture of a people. Place of publication. National Geographic Adventure. (2015). Kayaker Aleksander Doba. [online] National Geographic. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/adventurers-­o f-­t he-­y ear/2015/ aleksander-­doba/ Potts, M. (2015). Atlantic Kayaker wins 2015 people’s choice adventurer of the year. [online]. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/adventure-­blog/2015/02/11/atlantic-­kayaker-­wins-­2015-­peoples-­choice­adventurer-­of-­the-­year/ Schlereth, T. (1992). Columbia, Columbus, and Columbianism. The Journal Of American History, 79(3), 937. https://doi.org/10.2307/2080794 Speroni, C. (1948). The development of the Columbus Day Pageant of San Francisco. Western Folklore, 7(4), 325–335. https://doi.org/10.2307/1497837 Stengel, M.  K. (2000). The diffusionists have landed. Atlantic Monthly, 285(1), 35–48. UNC-Chapel Hill. (2019). What is the history behind Indigenous Peoples’ Day? | UNC-Chapel Hill. [online] The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.unc.edu/posts/2019/10/11/ what-­is-­the-­history-­behind-­indigenous-­peoples-­day/ Van Sertima, I. (Ed.). (1976). They came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America. Random House. Wallace, B. (2005). The Norse in Newfoundland: L’Anse aux Meadows and Vinland. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 19(1) https://journals.lib.unb. ca/index.php/NFLDS/article/view/140

CHAPTER 3

Ubuntu: Social Justice Education, Governance, and Women Rights in Pre-­colonial Africa Hellen Taabu

For African women, feminism is an act that evokes the dynamism and shifts of a process as opposed to the stability and reification of a construct or framework. … Feminism is structured by cultural imperatives and modulated by ever-shifting local and global exigencies. —Nnaemeka, 2009, p. 378

H. Taabu (*) Department of Social Justice in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_3

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Introduction In this chapter I propose to embark on a journey of rediscovering the gem that is Africa with its hidden history in a bid to decenter Eurocentric knowledge which has been weaponized to sub-humanize and continues to sub-humanize Blackness. To unearth hidden erased histories, it is imperative that we look at pre-colonial Africa before the impact of colonialism and enslavement. We need to narrate the African story from the perspective of the hunted. As the African proverb states, “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter” (Achebe, 1994). I first read this magnificent ground-breaking African novel in high school as it was one of the requisite set books in my literature class. This book is centered on the protagonist, Okonkwo, and the struggles he had at the onset of

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colonialism: the cultural dissonance, issues of identity, loss of history, and loss of governance, among other epic loses. At the end of it all, Achebe aptly sums up the confusion: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere Anarchy is loosed upon the World. W.B. Yeats

For Okonkwo, things fell apart and the center could no longer hold; hence, he resolved to commit suicide, obliterating himself from this world for he struggled with the dissonance between challenging and embracing colonialism. This novel is very relatable since this is the sentiment I have about my country Kenya and the African continent at large. For decades, our history has been documented and narrated by the west with minimal input from the Africans themselves, hence the distortion and/or obliteration of our pertinent and important histories. The sad part is that in the absence of counter-narratives, incorrect information is accepted as valid and consequently representative of who we are as a people. Hence Blackness as history only exists in reaction to whiteness in colonial records and records of enslavement. It is imperative that we endeavor to produce counter-narratives since the power to narrate what happened goes hand in hand with the power to remove toxic power and misinformation from the narratives. I grew up in Kenya and was immersed in a childhood that had two sets of cultures with many people gravitating to more Westernized Eurocentric ideals with skewed/faulty assumptions such as English being the master of all languages, the elite subject of instruction in schools, and the official language of communication in offices. Other Indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge, such as my native Kalenjin language, were relegated to the back seat and were and continue to be seen as primitive and backward. In my primary school days, one would be punished, publicly shamed, and humiliated for speaking their native language at school. At one point, the punishment was humiliating in the form of carrying a bone around one’s neck or wearing a sack cloth with the writings “shame on me, I spoke (Kalenjin), my vernacular language in school,” as a punishment for speaking a language that we were so comfortable and conversant with.

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These punishments made us fearful of conversing in our native languages and we grew up to despise the said languages in totality with the culture they are encased in. Eventually, many of us lost this crucial part of our identity as we gravitated more toward whiteness and were proud of communicating only in English, the language of the colonial master. This attests to how the continent of Africa has and continues to be harmed by Western influence from the dawn of the transatlantic slave trade to colonial domination to disproportionate commerce today. It is a clear testament of how White colonizers marginalized, subjugated, and stripped Black people of their culture creating an inferiority complex among them and forcing them to emulate their White culture and society. Growing up in Eldoret, a small town in Uasin-Gishu, Rift Valley, Kenya, I enjoyed visiting my grandparents both maternal and paternal in the villages of Kapchorwa and Kapngetuny and learnt immensely from them. My maternal grandparents, Mzee Joel Siana and Mama Zipporah Siana, were among the first Christian converts who had been co-opted into this novel religion and been “born again,” changing their names and turning their backs on the Indigenous ways of life that were deemed heathen. On the contrary, my paternal Grandma, Toiyoi Chemuttu, stayed true to her roots and was a renown herbalist and traditional healer who would cure any disease. I recall the joy and appreciation of women who were otherwise deemed barren had when she gave them the joy of motherhood courtesy of her herbal treatments. Western education made us unappreciative of these skills that are now almost extinct. It is regrettable that none of us, her descendants, took any interest in this valuable knowledge as we were so engrossed in aping the White man and his culture. As I continue in this journey, I face great conflicts and turmoil within me. On many occasions I have had to question my validity and authenticity as an African Indigenous Black woman with a double consciousness: attempting to be true to my African heritage while at the same time partaking in the “white man’s goodies.” As I embark on this journey of discovery of social justice and law in precolonial Africa, I embrace it as a challenge to interrogate my destiny, unlearning and relearning new knowledges and ideas as I reclaim my true position as an authentic African woman, although I am situated in diasporic scholarly spaces. I will attempt to find a balance in my blackness and use my position to disrupt knowledge production and center Africa’s long-lost glory, history, and knowledge as I write from the perspective of the hunted.

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I am reminded by “Sankofa” that as I study and re-write the history of Africa, I should not only look backward but also be forward looking as I endeavor to learn from our past in a bid to shape the future. This chapter will give me an opportunity to discover valuable knowledge that will allow us to look to the future and chart a way forward for our people with full knowledge and pride of where our people have been, the dreams they have dreamt, their hopes, their victories, their tragedies, and triumphs. This is critical as we disrupt the emergence of the world as an epistemic project built on the imagination of Black absence. In this sense, the phrase, “Black people and history Matters,” is an urgent clarion call and a direct reaction to a long history of unmattering. The question I and many of my colleagues will endeavor to interrogate is, how do mainstream knowledge keepers attenuate Africa’s history as they simultaneously valorize it?

Community Versus Individuality: “Ubuntu” as Social Justice Concept in Pre-colonial Africa “Motho ke motho ka batho”

“A person is a person by other people”—(Sesotho, South Africa). “Umuntu umuntu ngabantu”— A person is a person through/by means of other people—(IsiZulu, South Africa)

In many African societies, the experiences of society as a clearly bounded group outweigh the experience of networks of personal relationships; therefore, the stability and continued existence of the group is a much more important consideration than the rights of the individual (Muriithi, 2006; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). Individual identity stems from group identity and group identity establishes itself at various levels of interaction between groups, families, communities, clans, villages, chiefdoms, subtribes, and larger political entities (Muriithi, 2006; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). Anyone who isolates himself from the group is deemed a threat to the whole group. This philosophy is clearly demonstrated by the “Ubuntu philosophy,” which means “personhood” or “humanness” which appears in diverse forms across African societies (Muriithi, 2006; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). It is a cultural worldview that interrogates what it really means to be human (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018, p. 94). “Ubuntu” epitomizes humanness, a spirit of caring and community, harmony and hospitality, respect, and responsiveness that groups and

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individuals accord each other in their daily interactions (Mangaliso, 2001; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). It forms the foundation for the values and relationships among people of African descent, which extends to their relationship with “outsiders” (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). The underlying principles of Ubuntu are “reciprocity, suppression of self-interest, humanness and the virtue of symbiosis” (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018, p.  95). Ubuntu aims at strengthening communities’ capacity to promote peace and solidarity, which enables members to conceive of one another as fellow humans, leading to solidarity and the promotion of common welfare. In the context of Ubuntu, the welfare, safety, and well-being of the individual are ascertained by ensuring the same for others (Muriithi, 2006). Therefore, a person becomes a person only through his relationships with and recognition by others in their daily interactions within the community. Ubuntu is community oriented as opposed to the contemporary sociopolitical order that encourages and promotes individualism and elitism (Muriithi, 2006). It is about the pure essence of being human. It challenges the philosophical analogy of “I think, therefore I am” by asserting that “I am human because I belong, I participate, I share” (Muriithi, 2006). It promotes sympathy and respect for the dignity of others through conveying the view that one is inextricably bound up in the humanity of others (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). According to Mbiti (1970), the spirit of “Ubuntu” affirms that the life of the individual is subsumed in that of the community because the individual is a product of the community. The individual can therefore say: “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am!” “Ubuntu’s” acknowledgment of the indivisibility of humanity creates a great capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation among the members of a community. Since the Indigenous African philosophy has since time immemorial been woven around “Ubuntu,” it created a family atmosphere where there is empathy and kinship among the community members (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018; Ramose, 1999). In highlighting on the link between Ubuntu and social justice, Sibanda (2019) opines that social justice is culturally specific and stems from shared assumptions about the nature of being, how we create and model this understanding, and the values that guide what we deem to be in the interest of all and it encompasses all the varied relationships enshrined in this context. The importance of the “I/We” relationship is critical in this equation as social justice is not rooted in individual rights but the collective rights of “We” in the “I/We” relationship as seen in the Ubuntu theory (Sibanda, 2019; Hailey, 2018). In most African traditions, the

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individual does not exist alone except corporately as he owes his existence to the ancestors (past generations) and his contemporaries, and his existence has great implications for the futurity of the clan (Mbiti, 1990; Sibanda, 2019). In a nutshell, he is part of a whole and the community is obligated to make, create, produce, and model the individual for he/she is dependent on the corporate group. Ubuntu is mostly known to have originated from South Africa’s Nguni languages (isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiNdebele, isiSwati) and it exists in different lexes among Bantu speakers of Sub-Saharan Africa (Masina, 2000; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). Among the Chewa language speakers of Zambia, it is referred to as “Umunthu”; among the Yao speakers in Malawi, it is “Umundu”; among the Tsonga in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and Mozambique, it is referred to as “Bunhu”; among the Shona of Zimbabwe, it is “Unhu”; whereas among the Venda of South Africa, it is “Vhutu” (Masina, 2000; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). However, Ubuntu is not only restricted to Bantu speakers as it is also found in other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, among the Senegalese, the concept of “Teraga” embodies the same spirit of collective hospitality and responsibility (Nussbaum, 2003). “Ubuntu’s” principle underlies the idea that your pain is my pain; my wealth is your wealth; your salvation is my salvation; or as the Sotho aptly state, it is through others that one achieves selfhood; therefore, injury to one is injury to all (Nussbaum, 2003). Nussbaum (2003) also relates Ubuntu to the West African analogy of, “I feel the other, I dance the other, and therefore I am.” In West Africa, the Igbo practiced “Ubuntu” through expressions of humanness, accommodation, compromise, and fairness (Ezenwoko & Osagie, 2014). On the other hand, the Yoruba reflected on the concept of “Omulabi” or someone governed by humanness in both interpersonal and intergroup relationships (Ezenwoko & Osagie, 2014; Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). In a nutshell, “Ubuntu” reinforces the notion of humanness, compassion, and mutualism. Ubuntu seeks to reconcile the balance between the self and others, the destructive and the creative, the good and the bad with the aim of resolving immediate or impending conflict (Masina, 2000). According to Tutu (2013), it is easy to know and feel when “Ubuntu” is there and when it is absent since it has to do with all it means to be truly human, to know that “you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.” “Ubuntu” inspires the community members to act in solidarity with the vulnerable, the weak,

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and the poor in the web of “humanhood” (Hailey, 2008). Mandela (1997, p. 324) expounds the spirit of “Ubuntu” by proclaiming, “All are human only through the humanity of others, which should be the basis for the achievement of a better world.” Mandela opined that society can only be transformed through embracing reconciliation and promoting understanding and love between diverse groups (Mandela, 2013). On his release from prison, Mandela (2013) made it his mission to liberate both the oppressor and the oppressed since he believed that to be free is not to merely be unshackled from chains, but to live a life that respects and enhances the freedom of others. This epitomizes the spirit of “Ubuntu!” According to Tutu (2013), the concept of Ubuntu is difficult to explain in a Western language for it calls upon all of us to share what we have. It means that our humanity is caught up, inextricably bound with that of others, and we belong in a bundle of life (Tutu, 2013). We are human because we belong, participate, and share. A person with “Ubuntu” is open and available to others and does not feel threatened by others (Tutu, 2013). He/she has self-assurance that comes from knowing that he/she belongs to a greater whole that is diminished when others are diminished, humiliated, tortured, oppressed, or treated as lesser beings (Muriithi, 2006). “Ubuntu” ascertains that everyone’s humanity is expressed through their relationships with others. It recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all citizens in promoting individual and societal well-being.

“Ubuntu,” Leadership, and Fairness in Pre-colonial Africa As a value system, “Ubuntu” informs human behavior in the context of the treatment of others for instance as it pertains to the treatment of the governed by the political leaders. Ubuntu can also be seen as a management and leadership principle that ensures society’s resources are allocated in an efficient, fair, and equitable manner (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018). Many Indigenous African cultures used “Ubuntu” as the basis of their restorative justice approach to conflict resolution (Ramose, 1999). For instance, the people of Kemetic descent in Egypt were governed by the principles of “Ma’at” that espoused restorative justice like “Ubuntu.” In Kemet traditions violence and unfair treatment were shunned in favor of restorative justice based on the principle of respect, accountability,

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inclusiveness, and balance (Asante, 1990). In elucidating the power of Maat (Truth, Power, and Balance), Asante (1990) details Kemetic concepts such as Tep (Begging), Pet (Extension), Heb (Festival), Sen (Circle), and Meh (Crown). Asante (1990) wonderfully weaves together African historical, theoretical, methodological, and mythical elements to reveal that the secret of all African cultures is through the door of Kemet. “Ubuntu” philosophy corresponds to social justice, since it is concerned with equity and the recognition and acceptance of shared values and resources (Ngubane & Makua, 2021; Metz, 2011). Social justice speaks to the acceptable values of the “Abantu” people such as togetherness, communalism, and respect for others. Ubuntu and social justice are shaped by positive human relations such as how people in a particular context accept and negotiate values for their communities (Metz, 2011). Ubuntu espouses social justice principles such as equality through promoting equal opportunities, equity by encouraging interdependence, and fairness through sharing resources for the survival of all members. Where there is lack of respect and inequality, the principles of Ubuntu are compromised (Metz, 2011). Therefore, I propose that if the entire world could embrace Ubuntu philosophy with dignity and understanding, it has the potential of initiating all humanity to the values of Ubuntu and cultivate social justice values of equity, recognition, and fair participation among people from all social backgrounds. It can also promote the values of co-existence and social cohesion among people from diverse backgrounds (Le Grange, 2012; Ramose, 2004; Ukpokodu, 2016; Ngubane & Makua, 2021). We need to restore the Ubuntu philosophy to its rightful place, at the core of the preservation of African values. Ukpokodu (2016) opines that we need an Ubuntu pedagogy in education to accord the Ubuntu philosophy a fair and honorable recognition. As discussed earlier, Ubuntu is culture-specific and loses its true meaning and essence when translated into English. This calls for a radical change in the education system through the fostering of epistemic freedom that stems from social justice. Epistemic freedom as a process will create room for the enactment of decolonizing research that will decenter knowledge and elevate Indigenous knowledges that have been rejected and marginalized for far too long. As Sibanda (2019, p.  19) aptly states, “Epistemic freedom speaks to cognitive justice; it draws our attention to the content of what it is that we are free to express and on whose terms. Epistemic freedom is about democratizing ‘knowledge’ from its current rendition in the singular into

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its plural known as ‘knowledges.’ It is also ranged against overrepresentation of Eurocentric thought in knowledge, social theory, and education. Epistemic freedom is foundational in the broader decolonization struggle because it enables the emergence of critical decolonial consciousness.”

“Ubuntu” and Community Building “Jifya moja haliinjiki chungu”/“Kidole kimoja hakivunji chawa”/“Umoja ni nguvu, utengano ni udhaifu.” “One stone will not support a cooking pot”/“A lone finger can’t kill lice”/“We are strong together, but weak in solitude”—(Swahili, Kenya)

Among many African communities, survival was a critical element of existence as it enabled them to get through harsh environmental conditions; hence, they highly depended on each other. Despite individual differences, the members of a community needed each other to thrive; therefore, solidarity and co-operation were essential traits for the existence of the community. Using an African analogy of collective fingers, Mbigi (1997) illustrates the importance of community cohesiveness, solidarity, compassion, and interdependence as opposed to an emphasis on individuality. The Swahili saying “kidole kimoja hakivunji chawa,” loosely translated, “One finger/thumb though strong cannot kill aphids on its own,” forms the core of the Collective Fingers Theory. From this wise saying, three critical lessons emerge. Firstly, the importance of collective effort, co-operation, and equity for the achievement of any set goals as seen in the combined efforts and contribution of each finger (Mbigi, 1997). Secondly, it is critical that everyone’s efforts be recognized and appreciated as equal to empower them and facilitate their willingness and readiness to engage in any given task or community building (Mbigi, 1997). Thirdly, fingers in the proverb are representative of the five Ubuntu core values of solidarity, spirit, compassion, respect, and dignity that are internalized and nurtured to promote a collective culture (Mbigi, 1997; Ngubane & Makua, 2021). This theory promotes social justice principle of respect for each person’s individuality “umuntu” and his sense of belonging among other people “abantu” (Chilisa, 2012; Sibanda; 2019). Chilisa (2012), and emphasizes the values of ubuntu’s notion of “I/We” that is more accommodative of interdependence contrary to the Eurocentric notion of “I/ You” that asserts individualism. The Collective Fingers Theory attests to

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the fact that Ubuntu philosophy educated and socialized people to be responsible for themselves and others as they engage respectively with each other (Ngubane & Makua, 2021). We can therefore conclude that a socially just, respectful, and harmonious community is central to Ubuntu and social justice core principles. In addition, Ubuntu epitomizes recognizing and respecting individual rights as enshrined in the rights of other members of the community at large. These examples and many others exemplify how Ubuntu philosophy highly resonated and are intertwined with social justice.

Pre-colonial Laws/Customary Law and Social Justice in Africa The pre-colonial law in most African states was customary in nature and was rooted in the practices and customs of the people. In any typical African society, most of the people operated in accordance with and subject to customary law. As I had suggested earlier on, a term such as the “African customary law” does not in any way, shape, or form imply that there is a single uniform set of customs prevailing in all the given Indigenous societies. However, it is a blanket description that is used in many Indigenous African systems to maintain law and order. These systems are in most cases ethnic in nature and operate within the area occupied by the ethnic group. The customary law greatly impacts the lives of many Africans around personal law with regards to matters such as marriage, inheritance, and traditional authority, among others (Mbiti, 1990; Khunou, 2013). However, it is worth noting that customary law is a living law that is not static and as such must be interpreted to accommodate the lived experiences of the people it is meant to serve (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). Using a few examples, I will endeavor to show that pre-colonial Africa had salient novelties in their legal systems that promoted justice, peace, and order among its community members. Special provisions such as communality/collective responsibility and the close linkage of spirituality and laws, both in theory and in practice, created unique legal systems that were practical, useful, and helped ensure social justice for all members of the community. There are significant absences in the academy on African legal history, which can be partly attributed to the undocumented/ oral history in pre-colonial Africa.

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Ubuntu and Traditional Leadership in Pre-colonial African Societies Many African communities lived in an order regulated solely by customary law. This system evolved over the centuries to the needs of collective solidarity based on kingship/chiefship/eldership. In most settings, property ownership including land, livestock, and crops was communal, mostly belonging to families as critical entities to which individuals’ efforts, talents, creativity, and lack thereof were rewarded (Khunou, 2013). However, land as a communal entity could not be bought or sold (Mbiti, 1990). Hence, in pre-colonial communities, the enjoyment and utilization of wealth was communal. The origin and nature of leadership in pre-colonial Africa was a mosaic of diverse cultural and linguistic communities each with its own leadership style. It was composed of different population groups with different languages, cultures, and traditions governed by traditional and elected leaders (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). There are varied opinions as it pertains to the roots and origins of the institution of traditional leadership in Indigenous African societies. However, most believe that traditional leadership is linked to God or a higher being who selects and ordains leaders (Khunou, 2013). Nonetheless, in most Indigenous African societies, traditional leaders did not miraculously come into existence as rulers but emerged as leaders often during crisis such as war or natural disasters (Khunou, 2013). Leadership was earned through the provision of unique and often distinct service to the community. In return, the community acknowledged, appreciated, and rewarded the efforts by crowning the given members as their leaders (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). This type of leadership became titled offices of headmen, chiefs, and kings. It is important to note that in most pre-colonial African Indigenous societies, leadership was democratic as it emanated from the people, such that when people accepted a leader, they countenance his leadership and sanction it (Ntloedibe, 1998). This mode used in selecting leaders was crucial in that it informed the handling of power and set parameters for consensus and participatory democracy in pre-colonial societies (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). Democracy and social justice emanated from ordinary customary rule of the community and the traditional leaders knew that the fate of their leadership was entirely dependent on the will and the support of the masses (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). Therefore, any leader who undermined the wishes and aspirations of the people jeopardized his

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position as a leader. Therefore, the leader respected the will of the people and was aware of the risk of being deposed if he abused his power and the will of the people. In the Indigenous African Traditional Society, law was binding to both the leaders and the subjects (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). The traditional leader passed laws, judged disputes with the consent of his council, and acted through the members (Khunou, 2013). For instance, in most Indigenous African societies, chiefs in conjunction with one or more councils ran the affairs of the tribe. The councils had the mandate to advice the chief, check his powers, and make policies through unanimous decisions (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). If the unanimous decisions were elusive, a village assembly was convened to debate the issue and the majority ruling would suffice (Khunou, 2013). In such meetings, the chief would listen attentively, summarize decisions, and attempt to produce a consensus among diverse opinions (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). Therefore, the chief was expected to not dictate but lead through consensus. It is worth noting that the greatest and most valuable feature of Indigenous pre-colonial Africa societies was that it was not designed to be an all-powerful entity as seen today. This can be attributed to the fact that the community commonly owned the means of production such as land and hence undermined the basis for a market economy and a landed aristocracy as is the norm today (Ntloedibe, 1998; Khunou, 2013). This ensured a society that was fair and just with equitable distribution of resources to all its members.

Conclusion We hope that in this chapter I have been able to elaborate that, contrary to what is believed, evidence shows that Africa had great civilized systems of governance that were more advanced than the systems utilized in modern societies. The focus of many institutions in pre-colonial Africa was aimed at service to the community as opposed to individual pursuits. The penmanship pertaining to pre-colonial African history continues to be largely ignored by mainstream academia. Any development in this area has been and continues to be blighted by Eurocentric theories that only deny that pre-colonial Africa had systems that maintained law and order that had social justice tenets at the core of their operations. Most pre-colonial African communities had legal systems that were well thought of, practical, and useful for consolidating peace, harmony, and meaningful

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co-existence. These legal systems were tailored to fit the political, economic, polytheistic, and other peculiar characteristics of the society at large. The interconnected nature of spirituality and law was evident in many of the communities, as many people in pre-colonial Africa were highly spiritual which formed the basis of their culture and government. Spirituality was resolutely tied to the judicial laws, making spiritual practice inseparable from law. In these customary laws, the rights and privileges of women were enshrined and fully protected.

References Achebe, C. (1994). Things fall apart. 1958. Anchor, 178. Akinola, A. O., & Uzodike, U. O. (2018). Ubuntu and the quest for conflict resolution in Africa. Journal of Black Studies, 49(2), 91–113. Asante, M. K. (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity, and knowledge. Africa World Press. Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. SAGE Publications. Ezenwoko, F. A., & Osagie, J. I. (2014). Conflict and conflict resolution in precolonial Igbo society of Nigeria. Journal of Studies in Social Sciences, 9(1), 146. Hailey, J. (2008). Ubuntu: A literature review. Document. Tutu Foundation. Hailey, M. L. (2018). African American women leaders overcoming Barriers to leadership: A phenomenological study (Doctoral dissertation, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology). Khunou, S.  F. (2013). The origin and nature of traditional leadership in South Africa. Matatu: Journal for African Culture & Society, 41, 293–320. Le Grange, L. (2012). Ubuntu, ukama and the healing of nature, self and society. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(sup2), 56–67. Mandela, N. (2013). Long walk to freedom. Hachette UK. Mangaliso, M.  P. (2001). Building competitive advantage from Ubuntu: Management lessons from South Africa. Academy of Management Perspectives, 15(3), 23–33. Masina, N. (2000). Xhosa practices of Ubuntu for South Africa. In I. W. Zartman (Ed.), Traditional cures for modern conflicts: African conflict medicine (pp. 169–181). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Mbigi, L. (1997). Ubuntu: the African dream in management. Randburg. Mbiti, J. S. (1970). African religion and philosophy. Heinemann. Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African religions & philosophy. Heinemann. Metz, T. (2011). Ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in South Africa. African Human Rights Law Journal, 11(2), 532–559. Muriithi, T. (2006). Practical peacemaking wisdom from Africa: Reflections on Ubuntu. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 1(4), 25–34.

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Ngubane, N. I., & Makua, M. (2021). Intersection of “Ubuntu” pedagogy and social justice: Transforming South African Higher Education. Transformation in Higher Education, 6, 113. Nnaemeka, A. N. (2009). Towards an alternative development paradigm for Africa. Journal of Social Sciences, 21(1), 39–48. Ntloedibe, E. L. (1998). The role of traditional leaders as the custodians of culture, tradition and land. Paper delivered at a Workshop on Culture, Religion and Fundamental Rights, 26–27 November. Nussbaum, B. (2003). Ubuntu: Reflections of a South African on our common humanity. Reflections: The SoL Journal, 4(4), 21–26. Ramose, M.  B. (1999). African philosophy through Ubuntu. Mond Books Publishers. Ramose, M. B. (2004). In search of an African philosophy of education: Perspectives on higher education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 18(3), 138–160. Sibanda, S. (2019). In search of social justice through Ubuntu: A critical analysis of Zimbabwe’s post-colonial education for all (EFA) policy. Canterbury Christ Church University. Tutu, D. (Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation). (2013, January 25). What is Ubuntu? Archbishop Tutu describes fundamental aspects of Ubuntu. Retrieved from, What is Ubuntu? Archbishop Tutu describes fundamental aspects of Ubuntu. Ukpokodu, O. N. (2016). You can’t teach us if you don’t know us and care about us: Becoming an ubuntu, responsive and responsible urban teacher. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers.

CHAPTER 4

Women to Women Marriage, Social Justice and House Property System in the Precolonial Period: Implications for Educating the Youth Babere Kerata Chacha and Hellen Taabu

By marrying women, these … women are clearly radically disrupting the male domination that operates in their everyday lives. Their stories may begin with land and struggles over material resources, but they are also stories of love, commitment, children, sexual freedom, vulnerability, and empowerment. The “implosion” of all these things makes these women’s stories unique and all the more compelling to feminists who are constantly searching for unique practices of feminism that resemble, but are not engineered by, western feminism.

B. K. Chacha (*) Laikipia University, Nyahururu, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] H. Taabu Department of Social Justice in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_4

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Introduction In pre-colonial Africa, woman rights were protected and enshrined in the customary laws as evidenced by their conspicuous presence in high places. Contrary to prevailing false narratives, women in pre-colonial Africa were not a homogeneous group that lived static lives relegated to the domestic sphere. On the contrary, women contested, negotiated, complemented, and transformed their societies through their varied roles in socio-­political, religious, and economic spheres. Women led armies, played important consultative roles in politics, and as seen among the Lovedu people of South Africa, they were supreme Rain queens. Among many pre-colonial African communities, what it meant to be a woman was fluid. For instance, among the Langi of Uganda, the “Mukoko dako” or effeminate males were considered as an “alternative gender status” who were treated as women and could marry men with no social sanctions (Tamale & Murillo, 2007; Tamale, 2013). There were also the Chibados or Quimbanda of Angola, male diviners who were believed to carry female spirits (Tamale, 2013). In the Sahel region of West Africa, queen mothers and other royal women played key roles in the empires and states. According to Saidi and Yacob-Haliso, between 800 CE and the 1900, Swahili states became important trading centres in the Indian Ocean, and according to oral narratives, the first rulers were women. Among the Akan of West Africa, there were both male and female leaders, and the requisite for being a leader was that one’s mother must be from a royal clan. Among the Asante, women played a key role in commerce as they still do in modern-day Kumasi, Ghana. The pre-colonial Asante community was an enormously powerful and rich empire, which was matrilineal in nature with the Asantehene and the Asantehemaa as the male and female leaders, respectively. Each community/local polity was represented by a queen mother and a chief who oversaw its daily operations. The queen mother, who was selected based on both her abilities and her blood ties, embodied the virtues of motherhood and was considered the mother of the nation. She had varied responsibilities, but her primary role was conflict resolution especially in cases involving women such as domestic affairs and issues of commerce. The Asantehemaa also had certain ritual duties such as the recognition of young women’s puberty and officiating their initiation ceremonies.

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Women-to-Women Marriages as a Key Concept of Social Justice in Pre-colonial Africa In a household system where cattle and land are the main resource base for the family economy, it is important that the practice of women-to-women marriage is also discussed in the context of the “house property system”. In this system, each maternal “house” essentially and ideally functioned as an independent and self-contained unit as far as needs and availability of marriage-cattle were concerned. Gluckman coined the term house property system to describe the system whereby rights to the use and inheritance of property are divided between sets of brothers centred on their mother’s “house.” In all South and East African societies, house property systems occur, though their forms vary. Hakansson (1985) proposed a model explaining why co-wives are autonomous with respect to the management and use of property in some systems (termed “decentralised”) and not in others (“centralised”). LeVine’s hypothesis that co-wives get on ‘badly’ when they live in close quarters receives some support. Her analyses show a marginal deterioration in co-wife relationships when population density is high and when cultivation is predominant. Because livestock keeping often dictates that co-wives live separately (e.g. Peristiany), this can be viewed as indirect support for LeVine’s idea, the hypothesis that the ranking of cowives according to seniority helps avoid conflict (Borgerhoff 103 (4), pp. 1059–1082). The “house property system” finds expression in the way the Kuria have always referred to the practice in terms of the problems it was intended to solve. For instance, as already indicated, people would explain the women-to-women marriage by reference to the fact that “a sonless house is a poor house.” Thus to “marry” would be referred to as giving cattle on behalf of the poor house in order “to prop the house up.” The women-to-women marriage upgraded the “married” women’s personhood in many respects. For one, and obviously, it altered the woman’s social status completely; in this case, she no longer would be disregarded or barren, but she had now “brought forth her house.” This is well illustrated in the Kuria saying arooba irigoti, which means the woman has “joined a body with the head” or arichokia moe, meaning she has “brought forth her house” (ibid.). Such a woman was empowered by society to make many decisions regarding her “house,” which was under her care, and she would raise her own irihicho (a herd of cattle).

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She would be regarded as the senior-most woman in her village, and she would be approached to adjudicate conflicts occurring among other women. Finally, when she got into old age, she would be honoured by the isubo yu umukungu ceremony to make her a Kuria elder. This was an elaborate ceremony that took about three days and was normally sanctioned by the inchaama or Kuria council of elders. The women-to-women marriages were very elaborate and popular among the Kuria in the pre-­colonial period. However, this Indigenous practice changed significantly during the nineteenth century and with the coming of Christian missions and significantly altered the institution of cultural marriages. The phenomenon of women-to-women marriages is a distinct form of African customary marriage between two women, which should not be conflated or confused with the contemporary same-sex marriage as understood and practised in modern days. A critical analysis of women-towomen marriages gives us great insights into family, marriage, gender roles, and the status of women in African societies. Although women-towomen marriage in many communities was seen as a usurpation of the male role by the woman, many incidences of gender interactions show that gender roles are flexible and fluid. Women marriages were a logical product of creative kinship practice characteristic of African kin structures. In Africa, marriages represent an alliance of kin groups materially and ritually symbolised by bride wealth laws. Each society had acceptable standards and rituals that guided the kin groups involved. The rites of kinship were central to the interactions and social groups, and marriages achieved the same purpose. Women-towomen was beneficial to both men and women, and contrary to what many think, it was not bestowed to women by men to appease them in the patriarchal society. On the contrary, women to women marriages was a tool that women used to substantially advance their social status and/or increase their economic prowess. Thus, the current stigmatisation and abandoning of the institution of women-to-women marriages has the potential of negatively impacting the position of women such as those who are barren who would have used this institution to gain social status that is associated with motherhood. The institution of women-to-woman marriages was socially sanctioned and existed to either create kinship or augment the kin structure (Kareithi, 2018; Amadiume, 2015). As a form of positional succession, it was instrumental in creating change to facilitate structural continuity. The ability of

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a woman to marry another woman stemmed from achieved or ascribed gender positions created within a kin structure, which indicated that a woman filled a typically male-gender position or that the facilitation of women-to-women marriage in the kin structure secured a vacant gender position (Huber, 1968; Herskovits, 1937, Kareithi, 2018). Women-to-women marriages disrupted the role of women in traditional marriages and allowed women to appropriate male-gendered roles, breaking away from the patriarchal construction of the institution of marriage (Kareithi, 2018; Baraza, 2018). Therefore, the social construction of gender is taken to its limits in women-to-women marriages. The rationale of women-to-women marriage further exemplifies this as a customary marriage as well as an illustration of the progressive feminist ideologies adopted by pre-colonial African communities (Kareithi, 2018). The constitutional validity of women-to-women marriage opens the door to a more expansive, rich, and fluid understanding of “family” in Africa. Women-to-women marriage is of paramount importance and deserves recognition since its existence can be explained by structural demands as well as women’s access to status, rights, and authority (Kareithi, 2018; Amadiume, 2015; Greene, 1998). Through interrogating women-towomen marriages, we can get a glimpse of the great significance of women in pre-colonial Africa’s social structure as it exposes the social construction of gender (Amadiume, 2015; Kareithi, 2018; Greene, 1998). The cultural circumstances from which women-to-women marriages occurred are demystified through analysing the diversity of this institution. Its varied representation in diverse cultures illustrates fluidity of gender and how gender concepts served as an ingenious response to structural vacancies such as vacant positions in socio-political structures (Greene, 1998; Baraza, 2018). It also shows how gender construction as evidenced by women-towomen marriages facilitated women’s access to prestige and power: a perfect example of social justice in pre-colonial Africa. Even within patrilineal, patrilocal, polygynous societies, a woman maintained a particular relationship to her natal lineage (Kareithi, 2018; Greene, 1998; Baraza, 2018). Marriage as an alliance of kin groups was symbolised materially and ritually through bride wealth laws, whereby each community had rules, regulations, and rituals that guided the process (Amadiume, 2015; Baraza, 2018; Kareithi, 2018; Greene, 1998). In most cases, the husband gave his future wife’s family bride wealth, which cemented the marriage and determined

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the paternity of the offspring (Herskovits, 1937; Kareithi, 2018; Amadiume, 2015; Greene, 1998). The individual who paid bride wealth was the legal pater regardless of their biological parentage, and this process secured the legitimacy of the descendants who found a home or compound, ensured its perpetuity, and mobilised labour (Amadiume, 2015; Huber, 1968; Greene, 1998). The rationales for women-to-women marriage were a key determinant before creating the union (Kareithi, 2018). The rationales further exemplifies that this is a customary marriage as well as an illustration of the progressive feminist ideologies adopted by African communities. It is a clear indication that these marriages were commonplace in pre-colonial Africa and were an important institution in these communities. This was true for both the female husband and the wife, but more so for the society, as the relationship would fulfil a specific function in the community (Kareithi, 2018). These customary marriages were more common among some African communities in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and many other communities and continue to gain lots of currency in modern times. There are many cases or mitigating circumstance that allowed women to marry other women, for instance, in Kenya among the Nandi, Kamba, and Kuria; it was a frequent practice that is being propagated even today. The women-to-women marriages had great relevance and utility to all the parties that were involved since women were allowed to marry for varied reasons. For instance, women who were barren or widowed married to obtain the rights over the children produced and to continue propagating their posterity and lineage and that of their fathers or husbands (Cadigan, 1998; Oboler, 1980). Women who were wealthy accumulated wives for prestige and wealth, whereas those who were unable to bear sons married other women for posterity and inheritance (Cadigan, 1998; Oboler, 1980). However, in such circumstances, there were extremely strict rules that all had to adhere to. In the case of women-to-women marriage all ceremonial aspects of marriage were observed, bride wealth was paid to the girl’s father, and all the rules of the society that apply were upheld (Oboler, 1980). One would argue that in most cases, the Indigenous African women found a way of achieving social justice and socio-economic stability through the institution of women-to-­women marriage. For instance, among the Nandi of Kenya, a woman is socially considered to assume the conceptual male role upon marriage to her wife in a bid to avoid the

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confusing scenario that might arise in a patrilineal patrilocal system where women have no rights to land or to inherit property (Oboler, 1980). Therefore, by conceptualising the female husband as a man, the community recognises that she can also partake in what was traditionally considered as male rights especially in situations that involved property inheritance (Oboler, 1980). Therefore, it is safe to argue that women-to-­ women marriages was a “pro-female” institution that upheld the dignity of vulnerable women and gave them rights and prestige that were otherwise reserved for men. Nonetheless, regardless of the motivation behind the women-to-women marriages in pre-colonial Africa, the institution was useful in achieving social prestige and increased socio-economic security for the women involved. The female husband had the same rights and entitlements over the wife and her children as a man had over his wife and children. Consequently, she was expected to financially support and instil discipline on her children as culturally expected.

Women-to-Women Marriages in Pre-colonial Africa as a Form of Social Justice Whereas women-to-women marriage may be recognisable to many anthropologists, the concept remains unfamiliar to many people outside Africa. In family studies discussions, the topic is pushed to the extreme periphery by a historical fixation on Western nuclear families as an allinclusive ideal. This normative assumption of nuclearity makes it very hard for particular non-Western family forms, like the women-to-women marriages to be classified as extraordinary novelties. Women-to-women marriage is traditionally an African institution. Accordingly, it has been documented in over 40 African populations (Amadiume, 2015). The works of Evans-Prichard among the Nuer and that of Herskovit’s (1937) are among the earliest on the subject, although most of these studies are misleading since they consider women-to-women marriage from a perspective of conventional husband-­wife relationship and its associated concepts and definitions. This is very complex and occurs in different forms. However, debate has emerged on the nature of sexual practices associated with the marriage and on whether the marrying woman attains a transformed status. This debate resonates with similar discussions in the feminist, lesbian, and gay communities today. Is samesex marriage liberating, or does it ape attitudes that suppress women?

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In terms of whether there is sexual contact or not, Blackwood argues that lesbian behaviour cannot be ruled out, while others consider the marriage a non-sex institution (O’Brien, 1977). Evans-Prichard observes that women-to-women marriages occur among the Nuer in instances where a woman is barren. The barren woman takes a wife, hence becoming a cultural man, and arranges for what Ramet calls a “progenitor” for the wife so that “she” becomes a father. Similar forms of marriage are mentioned by Gluckman among the Zulu of Natal and Uchendu for the Igbo of southern Nigeria. Uchendu, in fact, admits that his own mother married several wives. Among the Lovedu, Krige invariably uses the term “female husbands” to describe women who raise the bride wealth. He inter alia suggests that a female husband can be a woman chief who marries another chief of a district (Krige, 1974). The practice of women-to-women marriage among the Nandi of Kenya, as it has been described by Oboler, is another interesting case. According to him, a Nandi woman with no sons can use the cattle belonging to her “house” to marry a wife of her own. Therefore, the Nandi woman who takes a wife is fundamentally recorded as a man. The woman ceases to have sexual intercourse with a man and even dresses like a man and so on, a case that is quite unique as compared to other cases of women-to-women marriage on the African continent. This marriage African women relationship has not been given the attention it warrants, and it is still misunderstood. It is hoped, therefore, that the Kuria case will give a clear picture of the nature of women-to-women marriage as it is practised in Kenya and Africa at large. In Kenya, women-to-women marriage is practised by the Kamba, Meru, Maasai, Kikuyu, Nandi, and Tugen.

Indigenous Law and Women-to-Women Marriage Normally, the women-to-women relationship was composed like a regular marriage, initiated by the transfer of cattle from the home of the female husband to the bride’s father. The bridal wealth in this marriage was often more than the conventional marriages. The basis of a women-to-women marriage was to father a son for the “house,” where the youthful woman was sociologically married. The “house” may be represented by the older woman who could not bring forth a son in her marriage. Specifically, this kind of marriage occurred when it was known that a certain wife had failed to deliver a male child and her age could not allow her to conceive or had

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failed to get a son during marriage. The Kuria people had a saying: inyumba etana moona wi kirisia ne ntobu, i.e., “a sonless house is an impoverished house,” hence, a home should have a wife married to it for continuity and prosperity. Therefore, such marriages were a way of keeping up with reproductive, social, or economic challenges caused by an ‘imbalance’ in the human or material make up of a maternal ‘house’ as an operative aspect of a two-generation agnatic family. The role of the women-to-women marriage was to make sure that the posterity of a household was represented by each wife. As in other societies, the concept of procreation and personal immortality was key among the Kuria people, and every wife would feel happy unless she had her own son. However, having a son by a Kuria wife was not just crucial; it also dealt with the economics of production, control of resources, and social security in old age. The Abakuria economic system, with the polygamous homes, provided adequate need for the occurrence of the women-towomen marriage, the main aim being to safeguard the resource of each house by bearing a son to inherit its property. Rwezaura discusses that the Kuria law of succession did not favour widows with no sons. Immediately after her husband dies, she becomes part of his property and could be inherited by her late husband’s kin. However, if she could no longer bear children, the women-to-women marriage became an instant solution. Borrowing from Huber (1968, p. 749), “the availability of cattle which had been obtained either by a woman’s own efforts, or as bride-wealth of her daughter, was the indispensable condition and an immediate incentive for a sonless wife to ‘marry’. A son stood in place of a protector for his old mother and if her husband was dead or if he was cohabiting with young co-wives. Having a son was so significant for a Kuria wife that had she failed to bear one in her second marriage, custom permitted her to take one of her sons born in a previous marriage into her new marriage where he will be counted as belonging to her new house. According to Rwezaura, Kuria law also provided that when a wife failed to bear a son in her second marriage, she would be allowed to return to her first husband—which in effect meant to the protection of her sons. A Kuria wife, therefore, counted on a son to provide for her during the old age, to procure grandchildren who would ensure the prosperity of her house and a daughter who will help her with housework and so on. To put the women-to-women marriage into its wider context, it may be considered that “children follow cattle”. This rule underlined a number of social institutions, and their

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operation was based on this rule. It is under this same rule that children born in a women-to-women marriage were affiliated to the house of the wife from where the cattle were obtained.

Barrenness and Increasing Lineage/ Ensuring Posterity In many African societies, a woman’s most important social role was to marry and procreate. Therefore, a barren woman was seen as a failure and in some cases was ostracised from the community for, they epitomised ill luck or bad omen. Luckily, women-to-women marriages give barren women an opportunity to escape shame and rejection, enable them to gain social prestige, and, in some cases, win the husband’s favour that would have eluded them. For instance, among the Akamba in Kenya, a barren woman was considered a social disgrace and a humiliation. In most instances, for as long as the husband is potent and fertile, the barren women was still expected to provide children for him without changing the dynamics of the marriage. Women-to-women marriages thus provided an opportunity for such women to mitigate their unfortunate circumstances whereby her wife will bear children for the husband on her behalf bringing honour and glory to the barren woman. In such circumstances, the authority of the female husband includes choosing the man with whom her wife will procreate, who may be the female’s own husband or any of her husband’s close male kin. In many instances among the Kamba, barren women are stigmatised and, in most cases, are not fortunate enough to get husbands, hence remaining single. However, due to the negativity attached to being single and other negative socio-­ economic repercussions for both men and women, many of the women marry fellow women. In those circumstances, the wife is given the prerogative to choose her own husband, whereas the female husband gains the prestige and status of marrying a wife and gaining children. In Nigeria, among the Igbo and the Kalahari communities, barren women engaged in women-to-woman marriages, where the female husband gives her wife to her husband or male kin for procreation (Krige, 1974). An outsider was never brought in as a lover. In these communities, barren women engaged in women-to-women marriages to enhance their socio-economic status (Krige, 1974; Tamale, 2013; Oboler, 1980). This is

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mainly because, following the death of her husband, a barren woman is not entitled to her husband’s property and is expected to vacate the land that she has inhabited for most of her married life (Kareithi, 2018; Baraza, 2018; Krige, 1974; Oboler, 1980). The offspring from a women-towomen marriage guarantees the female husband socio-economic security and standing in the community, hence maintaining her rights to her inheritance. In certain circumstances, widows engage in women-to-women marriages to increase the number of heirs of a deceased husband. For instance, among the Nandi of Kenya, a widow could gain social status by becoming a female head to add members to her dead husband’s lineage (Oboler, 1980; Tamale, 2013). She can choose a levirate or women-towomen marriage. Many opt for the women-to-women marriage since being a female husband gives then control over land (Mackenzie, 1990; Oboler, 1980; Obbo, 1976). Among the Nuer, the Dinka, and the Kamba, widows often contract women marriages in a bid to produce children in honour of the deceased husband (Oboler, 1980; Tamale, 2013; Kareithi, 2018). Nuer female husbands pay a male outsider to procreate with their wives, and the children produced take the name of the deceased husband making the female husband highly respected and revered by her in laws (Obbo, 1976; Oboler, 1980). In other instances, a daughter was declared male by her father to fill a vacant gender position normally occupied by a male member if he had no male child (Obbo, 1976; Oboler, 1980). In such a case where there were no male descendants, a daughter took up the role of a male daughter, and when they come of age, they marry a female as a wife who would have children for her (Obbo, 1976; Oboler, 1980). In certain cases, women who became wives procreated with enslaved men, and the children belonged to the female wife (Obbo, 1976; Oboler, 1980). To actualise the essence of the (Igbo female) marriage, the female husband remained the sociological father of any resulting offspring. Hence, the children took the lineage of the female husband as opposed to that of the biological father. Consequently, she played the role of the father, provider, protector, and indeed all the functions and responsibilities enshrined in the patriarchal concept, which included physical protection of the family and its territory, the economic, spiritual, and social sphere (Obbo, 1976; Oboler, 1980).

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Women-to-Women Marriages as a Form of Wealth Accumulation In many societies where the institution of women-to-women marriages existed, it enabled wealthy women to become female husbands to legitimise, keep, and maintain their wealth (Cadigan, 1998). In such cases, the female husband who was either single or married takes a wife to extend her own family or in other cases to gain recognition and social esteem (Kareithi, 2018; Cadigan, 1998; Oboler, 1980). Akin to their male counterparts, wealthy women married women to enhance their social status as a means of investing wealth (Cadigan, 1998). This reason for women-to-women marriage was most prevalent in West Africa, where women who were traders had immense wealth (Oboler, 1980). For instance, in West Africa especially in Dahomey and the Igbo community of the Nnobi, women were allowed to rule trade routes which gave them the power of authority akin to men. In the case where a woman wanted to have a higher stature in society, she would have a wife and a family of her own to take the complete role of a man (Oboler, 1980). Such powerful and rich women were invited to sit at the table with men and make decisions that affected trade in their communities (Oboler, 1980). After marrying they were no longer regarded as women and were given a male title. As Kimutu opined, among the Akamba, the “iweto” (female husband) becomes highly respected, esteemed, and has immense power and influence over other women as she inherently assumes the status of a man. Among the Igbo, traditionally, rich women attained the status of husbands to free themselves of domestic responsibilities as they attend to their businesses. Their wives will perform all household chores, while she devotes her time and energy to other affairs, usually her trade or business. The flexible and gender-fluid system of ancient Igbo allowed for this arrangement to enable women advance economically. As women accumulated wealth through trading, they most often invested it by taking wives. In some instances, the institution of women-to-women marriages was used to create and control the labour of the children and the wives in a bid to increase production (Krige, 1974). For instance, in textile production in the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, female husbands dominated the industry and generated large profits, which was invested in taking more wives. The institution of women-to-women marriages was instrumental in gaining control over the

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labour of the wives and the children and producing textiles at low cost (Krige, 1974). Women were engaged in spinning and weaving, were able to trade freely, and keep the profits (Krige, 1974). Another worthwhile example can be seen among the Lamai Emirate, where female husbands harnessed profits by sending their wives to extended trading trips. While on their trips, many of the wives would bear children that would legally belong to the female husband (Krige, 1974). As the children attain the age of five to six years, where they can work, the female husband claims them (Krige, 1974). However, the biological father could reclaim the children by paying the female husband to transfer her paternity rights to him (Krige, 1974). The female husbands were known to generate large profits from these encounters (Krige, 1974).

Women-to-Women Marriages as a Link for a Missing Male Role In many agricultural communities, daughters-in-law were respected and recognised for their role and help with domestic and farm work. Among the Gusii and Nandi of Kenya, Lobedu of South African, and the Simbithi of Tanzania, this recognition in certain circumstances could be translated in women-to-women marriages whereby the female husband married a “daughter-in-law” because of barrenness or the inability to sire sons among other reasons (Oboler, 1980). In such situations, the female husband pays bride wealth for a girl, and the process is deemed as marrying a “daughter-in-law for the house” (Krige 1974; Hakansson, 1985). This empowers a sonless female husband giving her the opportunity to head a “complete” household. Among the patrilineal Gusii and Simbithi, the female husband is then empowered to cleanse herself and get rid of the stigma attached to the inability to bear a male heir (Oboler, 1980). However, the matrilineal Lobedu granted every woman the right to a daughter-in-law for the home through the payment of bride wealth (Krige, 1974). Among the Simbithi, the daughter-in-law is taken to help with domestic chores as well as give the female husband prestige. The “daughter-in-­ law” legitimises the existence of the female husband’s “imaginary” son thereby enhancing the female husband’s status in society. While it is common knowledge that the female husband has no sons, through the

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daughter-­in-law, she is guaranteed of grandchildren as heirs. Among the Gusii, the female husband who is sonless uses the bride wealth from one of her daughters to marry a woman on behalf of her non-existent son (Kareithi, 2018; Oboler, 1980). The couple refers to each other as motherin-law and daughter-in-law, and the resultant children are considered the female husbands’ grandchildren (Hakansson, 1985). This marriage gives the female husband the prestigious role of being the head of a household and guarantees male heirs in the form of grandchildren (Hakansson, 1985). In some cases, as seen in the Yoruba of Nigeria, a widow who intended to remain with her in laws could marry a female relative in the absence of men in the family as suitable/probable options.

Women-to-Women Marriages for Wealth Retention and Economic Empowerment In some communities, barren women married or those who had only girls may marry a woman upon the husband’s death to hopefully sire a son who would inherit the family’s property (Oboler, 1980; Kareithi, 2018). In this marriage, the older women would enter a marriage with a younger woman, who would hopefully give birth to a son who would rightfully inherit her wealth as per the customary law (Oboler, 1980; Hakansson, 1985). Women-to-women marriages enabled the women to acquire and own property and to confer property on their offspring (Krige, 1974). In the case of autonomous female husbands, women-to-women marriages have been used by sonless wives and widows to have control over their wealth, which was impossible under other circumstances (Krige, 1974; Oboler, 1980). In other instances, women-to-women marriages were conducted by women who could not have male children or by women whose male children left or abandoned their mothers (Oboler, 1980). In such circumstances, the women enter the marriage to map out ways of protecting and retaining their wealth, and since they required assistance, they took wives to support them in managing their homes (Krige, 1974; Oboler, 1980). Women-to-women marriage offered the female husband the freedom to choose a companion of her choice unlike in the different-sex marriage she had been in previously (Kareithi, 2018). She was also able to perpetuate her lineage after the first male child was born to the union. The specific characteristics with autonomous female husbands were that the woman was usually a woman with wealth, and she initiated the marriage with the younger woman, who came to be known as the “wife” upon the marriage.

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Cardigan opines that the institution offered a strategy that women used to further their social and economic positions in society. In some of the women-to-women marriages, the motive behind the marriage was the desire for prestige and economic empowerment. Among the Nandi of Rift Valley, Kenya, women who are older (beyond childbearing age) who were never married and had no children were and continue to be prime candidates to become female husbands. These women used this institution to get an heir to inherit their name, wealth, and property (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019). A 2012 report by BBC on samesex marriage in Kenya noted that following a landmark ruling, the high court recognised that, in accordance with Nandi customary law on women-to-women marriages, a woman could inherit her late wife’s property (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019). Historians say the existence of female husbands in traditional African societies proves that not only were gender roles fluid in pre-colonial Africa, but there was never any completely matriarchal or patriarchal society in the world, especially not in Africa (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019). Women-to-women marriage legalised the recognition of children born out of this marriage, who would otherwise have been considered illegitimate in the community and unable to inherit (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019). The female husband provided the gender role of a father to the children in the community, and in this way, she could legitimise them. These marriages served to legitimise children in the community and offer direct linkages for these children to certain lineages, whether in patrilineal or matrilineal communities.

Priestesses, Warriors, and Sexual Freedom Another avenue that entitled women to having wives was through their roles as priestesses and warriors. This was mostly common in South Africa and the Dahomey Kingdom (Herskovits, 1937). Such women were allowed to have slave girls or young women in their community who would live with them (Herskovits, 1937). In other mitigating circumstances, a woman would marry a widow with children to help support the family and children who would then be adopted into her family and bear her name. Researchers attest that female husbands’ unions were asexual in nature. They were not motivated by sexual emotions and attraction between the couple. Nonetheless, the practice gave women more sexual freedom as it freed them from monogamous relationships and allowed them to have multiple and anonymous male partners.

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As Nwoko (2012, p.  72) explains, “Woman-to-woman marriage allowed for greater freedom of sexuality for the wives, they could have boyfriends, anonymous men whose only duty was to supply sperm”, henceforth “male sperm donors.” This was socially acceptable as the children were taken care of by the female husband and carried her legitimate name in the eyes of the society (Nwoko, 2012). The embedding of female marriages in Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries shows some form of social structure advancement and sophistication that Africa could boast of as compared to Western society. However, such portions of history have been omitted in telling the African history and especially the prestige and advancement of women in the social structure of Africa. As Nwoko (2012, p. 76) explains, In Igboland, women who were considered exceptional in the eyes of society due to their wealth and/or social standing, and those who were past menopause could marry wives for themselves, for their husbands, for their sons, and/or for their siblings. In Igboland, such arrangements involved two women undergoing formal marriage rites; the requisite bride price was paid by one party as in a heterosexual marriage. The woman who paid the bride price of the other woman became the sociological ‘husband.’  This attests to the fact that women gained even more status and power once they became female husbands. These influential women adopted the stature of men due to the fluidity of gender in the pre-colonial Igbo context; by marrying women their status was elevated mostly due to female husbands paying bride price (Nwoko, 2012). Among her female mates, the Umuada, she was regarded as a man and first among equals (Nwoko, 2012). Such a woman was treated like a man, and her opinion was first sought in the gathering of opinions. In community ceremonies, she enjoyed equal privilege with her male counterparts and, in some Igbo communities like Uguta, could break kola nut, but only among her female folks (Nwoko, 2012). She incorporates both secular and spiritual functions and obligations and participates in secret rituals and sometimes associated with the male elders in communal rituals (Nwoko, 2012). Women-to-women marriage fostered freedom and independence for women in most communities, as the customs in patrilineal communities limited their choice of partner and their status in society (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019; Nwoko, 2012). Both parties, the wife and the female husband, gained freedom because of the marriage arrangement. In some cases, taking a wife as a female denoted the woman’s status in society.

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Some of these marriages were conducted by women who had wealth and were well respected in their communities. A woman’s ability to take a wife gave her more independence, particularly in a patrilineal community (Baraza, 2018). The wife was not left behind in this arrangement since being a wife in a women-to-women marriage was an esteemed position. One of the roles of a woman in some communities was the propagation of the family through the bearing of children. Consequently, when a wife performed this task, she was exalted in the community. In some cases, the wife could choose her own sexual partners or gain freedom from a previous relationship (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019). The wife had the freedom, in some communities, to choose her male company without any interference from her spouse. She was also able to have her home separate from her female husband, and that too guaranteed her a measure of freedom. In some instances, the wife had been married before and had been in an abusive marriage or had been with a man who did not provide. The wife also enjoyed a measure of social freedom as she was deemed to be in a relationship with a partner who, often, had wealth and held a higher position in the community (Baraza, 2018).

Women-to-Women Marriages as Companionship One of the least discussed rationales for women-to-women marriage is the securing of companionship. When the women get married, one of the benefits, and arguably the most overt, is the fact that the parties gain each other’s company (Kareithi & Viljoen, 2019). As with most heteronormative marriages, the female husband carefully considers and identifies the woman whom she wants to marry. It is unlikely that she would settle on a person she does not like. Although, in some cultures, the female husband and her wife live in separate houses, these homes are in the same compound and the two can interact freely with one another. According to Oboler (1980), this creates a meaningful source of companionship. This is certainly true among the Kikuyu community, where the need for companionship was openly discussed as one of the reasons for women-to-women marriage (Kareithi, 2018). The female husband, or in some instances, the “mother-in-law,” usually gains much from the marriage. In addition to wealth and status, she also acquires a helper or helpers if she married multiple wives. The female husband is usually an older woman who, upon the payment of the bride wealth, obtains a wife who will take care of her and her homestead. This

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relationship is not one of master and servant as has been previously suggested, but one of spousal help and appreciation. In many instances, the female husband had been married before but, due to unhappiness, opted for divorce. The stated rationales illustrate that the institution of womento-women marriage was a well-thought-out and established cultural phenomenon that was important to the community (Kareithi, 2018). Many African communities embraced women-to-women marriage as an integral part of customary law and culture.

Conclusion We have demonstrated that women-to-women marriages, though demonised, pathologised, and outlawed in many contemporary African societies, were a key example of how the rights of women were protected in pre-­ colonial Africa. Women-to-women marriages challenged the role of women in these traditional marriages and allowed women to appropriate male-gendered roles, breaking away from the patriarchal construction of the institution of marriage. Women across sub-Saharan Africa creatively used the flexible institution of women-to-women marriage to their full advantage to gain maximum personal benefits. In some cultures, barren women have employed the system to provide themselves with the children they need to gain full recognition and membership in society. Widows have used the institution to gain status by securing children for their deceased husband’s lineage. Sonless women have married daughters-in-­ law to provide grandchildren and domestic help. Women have been known to become female husbands to secure rights over land. In West Africa, female traders have benefited from the system through gaining power and wealth through their marriage to women. Hence, contrary to the prevailing Eurocentric belief that African women were alienated for traditional sources of power, the phenomenon of female husbands bestowed more power, status, and wealth to women.

References Amadiume, I. (2015). Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African society. Zed Books Ltd.. Baraza, N. (2018). The institution of woman-to-woman marriage in Kenya: Navigating between culture and human rights. Africa Nazarene University Law Journal, 6(2), 71–91.

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Cadigan, R. J. (1998). Woman-to-woman marriage: Practices and benefits in sub-­ Saharan Africa. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29(1), 89–98. Greene, B. (1998). The institution of woman-marriage in Africa: A cross-cultural analysis. Ethnology, 37(4), 395–412. Hakansson, N. T. (1985). Why do Gusii women get married? A study of cultural constraints and women’s strategies in a rural community in Kenya. Folk, 27, 89–114. Herskovits, M.  J. (1937). A note on ‘woman marriage in Dahomey. Africa, 10(3), 335–341. Huber, H. (1968). ‘Woman-Marriage’ in some East African societies. Anthropos, H. 5. /6, 745–752. Kareithi, M., & Viljoen, F. (2019). An argument for the continued validity of woman-to woman marriages in post-2010 Kenya. Journal of African Law, 63(3), 303–328. Kareithi, M. W. (2018). A historical-legal analysis of woman-to-woman marriage in Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pretoria). Krige, E. J. (1974). Woman-marriage, with special reference to the Lobedu—Its significance for the definition of marriage. Africa, 44(1), 11–37. Mackenzie, F. (1990). Gender and land rights in Murang’a District. Kenya. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 17(4), 609–643. Nwoko, K.  C. (2012). Female husbands in Igbo Land: Southeast Nigeria. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 5(1), 69–82. O’Brien, D. (1977). Female husbands in southern Bantu societies. Sexual Stratification: A cross Cultural View, 109, 126. Obbo, C. (1976). Dominant male ideology and female options: Three East African Case Studies. Africa, 46(4), 371–389. Oboler, R.  S. (1980). Is the female husband a man? Woman/woman marriage among the Nandi of Kenya. Ethnology, 19(1), 69. Tamale, S. (2013). Confronting the politics of nonconforming sexualities in Africa. African Studies Review, 56(2), 31–45. Tamale, S., & Murillo, B. A. (2007). Out of the closet: Unveiling sexuality discourses in Uganda. Africa after Gender, 17–29.

CHAPTER 5

Back to the Roots: Reconnecting Africans in Diaspora Through Cultural Media, Education, and Personal Narratives Kathy Lewis, Fanta Ongoiba, and Leonard Wandili Introduction The need to reclaim one’s ancestral origin or past is a multifaceted and multipurpose process when placed in the context of our current time despite one’s geographical location and/or nationality/ethnicity. It is a

This chapter although written by three people with different growing up experiences connects us at a spiritual level as children of African ancestry. Slavery and colonization tried to fragment us and disconnect us, but writing this chapter enabled us to pick up our threads and tie them together. As Fanta and I (Kathy) write this last concluding paragraph, Leonard Wandili is no longer with us. He joined the spirit world more than a year ago. Leonard, although not with us, we feel you and we cherish your contribution to this chapter. We miss you tremendously and you will always be remembered for your generosity, kindness, and your warmth. We dedicate this chapter to you.

K. Lewis • F. Ongoiba (*) • L. Wandili Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_5

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process fraught with complexities and subtleties. The globalized world fueled by the advent of technology and neo-liberal ideals of a free market and a free state further complicates the process. An African in the continent or in the Diaspora is often overwhelmed with assimilationist appeals and tactics and is forced to adapt to ever-present-ever-changing conditions. For him/her, it is survival by whatever means and costs. Some of our own brothers and sisters, unfortunately, are holders of the cat of nine tails in defense of White supremacy. Therefore, for some, reclaiming their African Indigeneity is not on their frontal lobe. Yet, it remains a tug not only at the heart, but the beating of the drums to their own emancipation, a precursor to function, to survive, to thrive, and to dismantle a whole system of oppression. Therefore, what is presented in this chapter are the voices of truth, though suppressed, self-dignity and self-worth, though stomped on, and the uniqueness of our Africanness not forgotten in the long ago past, but present in every fiber of our being. For some, it is spiritual; it is physical; it is intellectual. It is a combination of all of these. This chapter will show the use of cultural media to search for the ancestral roots of Africans in Diaspora. This becomes more imperative when we realize the fact that science is not full-proof. The chapter will first demonstrate African culture in Mali, then show the disconnect of continental Africans before concluding with the view from the Diaspora.

Learning About Dogon Culture and Tradition in Mali Africa is a vast continent, the second largest, after Asia. It is four times the size of the United States, excluding Alaska. It is the cradle of human civilization. A diverse continent, Africa has more than 50 countries with a population of over 700 million people who speak over 1000 languages. Africa’s ecological and culture differences vary from one region to another. As an old continent, Africa is one of the richest in culture and customs, and its contributions to world customs and civilizations are impressive indeed. Africans regard culture as an essential element to their lives and future development. Culture embodies their philosophy, worldview, behavior patterns, arts, and institutions. The republic of Mali is a landlocked country bordered on the north by Algeria, on the east by Niger and Burkina Faso, on the north by Ivory Coast and Guinea, and on the west by Senegal and Mauritania. It covers

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an area of 482,077 square miles (1,248,574 sq Km) and has a population of more than 12 million. Throughout Mali, population densities are low, particularly in the more remote northeastern and eastern parts where densities are about three people per square mile. This trend has been reinforced since the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s which forced many people with a nomadic lifestyle in these northern regions to migrate to more southern zones and urban areas of the country. Bamako, the capital and largest city, is located on the shore of the Niger River in Mali’s southwest; it has a population of approximately one million. The territory of present-day Mali includes a great diversity of peoples and cultures that, prior to French colonial rule, were organized into different political forms, ranging from centralized polities to more decentralized structures.

People Mali is a multiethnic nation that comprises more than twelve ethnic groups, each of them speaking its own language. Still, ethnicity, as a marker of social and cultural identity, is extremely fluid in Mali. For centuries, the characteristically high mobility of the Malian people has created a web of social relations and commercial networks that crisscross the country, transcend national boundaries, and blur clear-cut divides between Mali’s different peoples and cultures. The majority (about three-fourth) of Mali’s population live in rural areas; settlement patterns vary with people’s mode of livelihood. Some of the country’s towns such as Segou, Mopti, Gao, Timbuktu, and Nioro du Sahel have existed for centuries. In this chapter we will put our emphasis on one ethnic group called Dogon. What does this mean? It is a member of a people of Mali noted for their sculpture and language. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian descent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200BC.

Land, Climate, and Vegetation Patterns More than half of the country’s total area lies in the Saharan and Sahelian zones of the northern triangle. The river Niger flows through the interior of the country for more than 1000 miles and serves as the country’s major trading and transport artery. It rises in the Fouta Djallon in the south and flows to the northeast across the Manding Plateau. Reaching Koulikoro,

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north Bamako, it spreads out in a valley. Mali’s climate is hot and dry, with the sun near its zenith most of the year. The use and definitions of “culture” vary, reflecting its association with western civilization and social status and its restriction to attitude and behavior. The cultures of various nations, societies, and communities around the world are determined by the basic elements of culture which are universal in nature. The six elements as identified are as follows: (1) beliefs, (2) values, (3) norms and sanctions, (4) technology, (5) symbols, and (6) language. The Dogon culture has been protected by the world organization as heritage (UNESCO); due to the abandonment of the ancient villages in the cliff, the architectural heritage is vulnerable and threatened.

Identification Malian national culture can be best defined as a project that was developed with different emphasis and credibility by the governments that led Mali (formerly French Sudan) in the post-independence period (1960 to the present). It is undoubtedly a colonial legacy. As in most post-colonial nations, the territorial and administrative boundaries established by the colonial power, in this case France, remained essentially unchanged long after independence. Westernized Malian politicians and intellectuals re-­ appropriated modern colonial institutions and adapted them to their reinterpretation of local aims and aspirations.

Language Mali is a country that has many languages. Bambara is used widely in West Africa, especially in business and trade. It is very similar to Dioula, a language spoken throughout the region. This means a Bambara speaker can communicate with people in a very wide region of West Africa. The official language of Mali is French, but it is not the language spoken by most Malians. French is spoken by people with a western education, and it is the language spoken by the people in government. Dialects are variations of a language. They often develop in isolated areas where there is little contact with other people. In the Bandiagara Escarpment, where the Dogon people live, there are nearly fifty major dialects. Dogon languages vary so widely that some Dogon people cannot understand the language spoken by other Dogon.

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The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, in West Africa, south of the Niger bend, near the city of Bandiagara and in Burkina Faso. The population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000. They speak the Dogon languages, which are considered to constitute an important value of the tribe. The Dogon language which belongs to the Niger Congo family is made of several different dialects. A team of researchers from the Direction Nationale de la langue (DNAFLA, 1980) found seven main ones: toro so, donno so, tombo so, jamsay, tegu kan, togo kan, and tomo kan. Two people speaking different dialects of the Dogon language may not understand each other. The ritual language “Sigi So” or language of the “Sigi,” which was taught to male dignitaries of the society of the mask (Awa), was considered a poor language and only contained about a quarter of the vocabulary of “Dogo so,” the Dogon word language. The “Sigi so” was used to tell the story of creation of the universe, of human life, and of the advent of death on the earth, during funeral ceremony and the rites of the “end of mourning.” Dama Dogon art revolves around religious values, ideals, and freedoms (Laude, p. 19).

Bambara It is estimated that 80 percent of the people in Mali speak Bambara, even though the Bambara people make up only 35 percent of the population. The Bambara, however, live in the more urban area of Mali, especially in Bamako, so they have had more opportunity to spread their language. During the colonial period Bambara was used by the African soldiers in the French colonial army, so other Malians picked it up. Because the newspapers and television and radio programs that developed after independence were centered in Bamako, where most of the people are Bambara speakers, the language spread even more widely and rapidly. There is even an organization dedicated to spreading Bambara throughout the nation. This organization, Direction Nationale de L’Alphabetisation Fonctionelle et de la Linguistique Appliquee (DNAFLA), was created in 1975. It also promotes the use of other Malian languages including Fulfulde, Songhai, Senoufo, Dogon, Soninke, and Tamashek. For all these reasons many people in Mali speak several tribal languages as well as French. English is gaining inroads, too, especially in Bamako. Dogon is spreading widely as the Dogon gains access to western education. They are smart and energetic people who have more influence than their small population size would suggest.

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Arts Art is an expression of culture. Mali is particularly rich in cultures that express themselves through music, architecture, crafts, and dance. Fragments of textiles found in caves on the Bandiagara Escarpment show that this art form was well established in the region by the eleventh century. In Mali, as much of Africa, art is something to be used, not just admired. African art has power because it is made for a purpose, usually for use in a ceremony or a ritual. Linguistic Affiliation Most Malians speak several languages and live in a truly multilingual context. Educated elite speak French, and it is the dominant language of the administration, formal education, and the media. Bamana has progressively become the lingua franca of Mali and is spoken by 80 percent of the Malian people, although it is the mother tongue of only 38 percent of the population. Various factors have contributed to the spread of the Bambara language in Mali. Under colonization Bambara became the vernacular of the French colonial army, but it was also used in other institutional contexts such as schooling by the White Sisters, a Catholic women’s missionary organization. Hurried western life, with everyone rushing around all the time, people pay little attention to the way they greet people. Giving a quick “Hello, how are you,” without waiting for an answer is normal. But in Africa people take time to greet each other and even go through an elaborate ritual that shows they really care about each other. Among the Dogon, for example, ritual remains an important part of the culture. It begins as two people approach each other. Long before they are standing close together, they call out questions about the person’s health and then about his or her family, parents, and even animals. Each question is answered. The other person goes through the same questions, and they are answered whether they are standing or walking together and even passing each other. The Local Perspective on Cultural Tourism and Cultural Heritage Management The Dogon are involved in the formation of a tourist attraction by building campgrounds and preparing meals for tourists, opening souvenir

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shops, arranging local guides, and collecting sites tax. The cultural capital is described as cultural knowledge, competence, educational qualifications, material possession, and involvement in cultural practices. Bourdieux (1997) described “cultural capital” as existing in three forms: in an embodied state, in an objectified state in the form of cultural good, and in an institutionalized state that confers original properties on “cultural capital” that is presumed to guarantee, for example, educational qualification (Corsane, 2005; 232). The local village guides draw a picture of Dogon country to tourists by storytelling. The Dogon are proud of their identity and are fascinated by their own culture and understand that tourists find their lifestyle interesting. In other words, their cultural self-awareness is high compared to other African ethnic groups. Educating young people creates growing awareness of their cultural identity, which can contribute to better cultural heritage management in the future knowing that it is oral transmission from generation to generation. Dogon culture is a matrilineal society. Women harvest, farm, spin, weave, care for, and teach the children. They are culture bearers and caretakers, who pass the history, religion, ritual, and ceremony to their children and grandchildren. Women regularly pass down the cultural and aesthetic histories of their societies, beliefs, and family genealogies through images painted on hides and homes, pottery, cloth, basket weaving, and adornment, including quill, work, beading, jewelry, and finger weaving. It should be noted that this art was originally created for utilitarian purposes and was not usually art made for its own sake. In the Dogon tradition the one God Ama created twins (the nummo pair) who were complete beings of both sexes (Griaule, 1970, 24); from the original twins came four males and four female nummo (descendants) who were able to fertilize themselves due to their dual nature. Many Dogon myths say that they are the descendants of these eight nummo. For the Dogon there is a man in every woman and a woman in every man. Women are the pillars of the world. A complete person is one who can nurture both sides (Drabo, Skirt power/Taafe Fanga, 1997). Religion Islam is the dominant religion in Mali today. People who follow Islam are called Muslims. Muslim practices are enormously throughout the Islamic world. Most Muslims in Mali are followers of the Sunni branch of Islam.

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In Mali it is estimated that 80percent of the population are Muslims. A tiny number of people, from 2 to 4 percent of the population are Christians. Half of them are Catholics, while the other half are Protestants. The remainder, close to 20 percent, follow traditional religious practices, also known as Animism. There are five elements of the Islamic religion that guide everyday life. They are the testimony of faith, prayer, giving support to the needy, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and asking a pilgrimage to Mecca for anyone who is able. The testimony of faith means that the person must say, “There is no true god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” This declaration is considered the most important pillar of Islam. Muslims pray five times every day, kneeling and facing the direction of Mecca, a city in Saudi Arabia that was the birthplace of Mohammed. These prayers are performed at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and night. People are allowed to pray almost anywhere, including at work, at school, in a field, or anywhere in public. One does not have to go to a mosque to pray. The pilgrimage is a sacred duty, but it requires only a person who can afford the trip and is healthy enough to make the journey. This pilgrimage, called a hajj, is performed in the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar Symbolism. Several symbols reinforce and elaborate such central aspects of Malian national culture as the struggle against colonization, the celebration of Mali’s rich history, and its long multicultural tradition. The text of Mali’s national anthem was composed by an influential politician and novelist, Seydou Badian Kouyaté, at the request of Mali’s first president, Modibo Keita. It celebrates the Malian struggle for independence and its newly achieved unity as well as urges Malians to channel their efforts into the process of nation-building. Mali’s flag uses the color symbolism of the pan-African unity movement—green (hope), gold (a reference to one of Mali’s natural resources), and red (the blood sacrificed in the struggle against colonization). Gender Roles and Statuses In many Malian farming communities both women and men are actively involved in agricultural activities. Among the Bamana, women, in addition to taking care of many household chores, work most of their lives in the collective fields of their husband’s extended family. Once women reach menopause they retire from work in the collective fields and often redirect their efforts in the cultivation of their own fields. Women are also very

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active in trade activities. Post-menopausal women, as in many other parts in Africa, are freer to engage more extensively in trade activities than are women of childbearing age. However, women sell mainly food items, both raw and processed, and a few manufactured goods (e.g., cloth), while men engage more often in the sale of manufactured goods. In other words, women’s access to market participation tends to be limited to a series of economic activities which are scarcely lucrative or at least less so if compared to the business in which men engage.

Disconnection from African Culture The disconnection of Indigenous Africans did not start and end with colonialism but dates to the era of slavery and has continued to the present day through the colonial education that is found in many countries. As slaves, Africans were physically and socially disconnected from their culture and as Olaloku-Teriba (2018) writes, as slaves drank from the water well just prior to boarding the slave ship, they were completely dislocated. “Today, local legend still holds that to drink from the well will result in memory loss, a complete dislocation one’s history” (Olaloku-Teriba, 2018, p100). While some may claim that colonialism brought civilization and education to Africa, very few people talk about the kind of education that was brought. There are different cultures in the world; however, no culture should be viewed as being superior to another, but as Iseke-Barnes (2005, p. 151) writes, “There is considerable concern amongst Indigenous writers regarding the misrepresentation of Indigenous heritage in the dominant society.” Through colonialism, cultures of the colonized people were stereotyped and made to look inferior when compared to those of the colonizers. Anand (2007) points out that stereotyping Indigenous cultures was one of the means of justifying imperialism as a way of “civilizing” the colonies. The desire to protect their cultures has, therefore, led Indigenous people to resist the colonialist right from the point of contact and in the periods after that. Concerning the culture and resistance of colonialists, Fanon (1963) writes in the Wretched of the Earth, “A national culture in underdeveloped countries should, therefore, take its place at the very heart of the struggle for freedom which these countries are carrying on” (1963, p. 232). The resistance of colonial culture can be partly attributed to a Swahili proverb that says, “mwacha mila ni mtumwa,” which translates to a person who ignores their culture as a slave. Colonialists

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understood very early the power and value of culture, and as Heleta (2018, p. 49) pointed out, “[K]nowledge and culture were as much part of imperialism as raw materials and military strength.” Therefore, one can argue, as colonialists were using their military to take away raw materials from Africa, they were also using their religion and education to disconnect Africans from their culture. The above section was shared by Fanta, a Dogon, born and raised in Mali before moving to Canada where she resides with her family. The following section is shared by Leonard, born and raised in Kenya, however, before his untimely death resided with his family in Canada. As an African born and raised in Kenya, I experienced my Indigenous culture firsthand. However, my life living and working in Canada has given me an opportunity to witness the challenges that we as African people face and how we have been disconnected from our cultures. I have seen how African cultures have been negatively portrayed and exploited, which has ultimately partly formed the foundation of this disconnect. I will base my writing partly on my recently acquired anti-colonial knowledge along with the nostalgic Indigenous knowledge that I acquired as a child growing up in Kenya. As Ilmi (2012) writes, “[A]n Indigenous knowledge framework complements anti-colonialism theory by providing the tools to subvert and resist colonial hegemonic ideologies and discourse.” Therefore, without my indigeneity and the current anti-colonial thought that I have learned, I would not have been able to fully grasp the scale of misrepresentation, exploitation, alienation, and disconnection of African people from their culture. The process of disconnecting African people from their culture starts with colonial education that is taught in most colonized countries. Colonial education negatively influenced Indigenous knowledge of people, and as Adyanga (2012) writes, “[T]his negative interaction between knowledge imposed on an Indigenous cosmology tends to undermine the norms, values and gendered contexts that maintain morality and harmony.” Based on my own journey through the education system in Kenya, I can now show that the education that we got was designed to disconnect us from our cultures with lasting negative impact. I will also point out that like most Indigenous Africans I went through my childhood without being able to pinpoint the exact source of my disconnection, since the tools that could have assisted me in identifying the source of the disconnect were hidden away by the colonial education. The colonial education system not only disconnected Africans from the culture, but it made them

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captives to the point where it was impossible to challenge that system. Anti-colonial knowledge has taught me that being an accomplice to colonial education is no longer an option especially for Indigenous African scholars. As I look back, the things that we learned and did during my elementary school years were designed to disconnect us from our culture, thus making it easy for foreigners to exploit our culture. During elementary school years, as students, we were told phrases such as “students we were there to be seen and not to be heard,” which we thought was meant to make us good students who obeyed without questioning. Even as our rights were violated through cruel punishment, we still followed and trusted that whatever the educators were doing was in our best interest. The Christian hymn by Don Moen that goes, “trust and obey for there is no other way if you believe in Jesus, you must trust and obey” was a common song that, as students, we sang nearly every morning in school. Our native languages were banned from schools, and anyone caught speaking their mother’s tongue was severely punished. Our native languages, as a result, become synonymous with something evil that could only bring us trouble. When we went home, we continued to speak English to impress our community members that we were, indeed, learning. We paid little attention to the fact that by continually speaking to our community members in English, we were disconnecting ourselves from our community. During my high school days, one of the main classes other than English and Mathematics was the Geography of North America. At no point did we learn about the geography of our own country Kenya. As a result, most of us grew up knowing more about North America than we knew about our own native country or continent for that matter. To use the metaphor of a plant, one can say that the disconnect that Indigenous Africans face is planted during elementary school, germinates, and grows during high school then to while at the university and by the time most people are adults, it becomes ripe. In other words, by the time Africans leave school, they are totally disconnected. Unfortunately, by the time most Indigenous Africans become adults, they cannot pinpoint the exact source of their anger, self-hate, alienation, etc. since the tools to assist them in identifying that source are usually hidden away by the colonial education. When one talks about an Indigenous scholar who is a product of a system that disconnects them from their culture starting when they are young, they may wonder if they are prepared to challenge that system or even try to reconnect. This, therefore, means to be an Indigenous scholar, one must be

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prepared for disconnection from their culture given that colonial education is still present in many countries including Kenya. However, at the same time, as an Indigenous African scholar, one should be more motivated to resist any further disconnection and should bring change in society by reconnecting using their lived experience. As Dei (2010, p.  6) writes, “Absence of resistance makes us accomplices.” This, therefore, means Indigenous African scholars have a responsibility to speak up and push for change that will eliminate the challenges that Africans face. It also goes without saying that these scholars should reconnect with their cultures. As I indicated earlier, colonial education included punishing Indigenous African students who spoke their mother tongues and as a result, most have grown up without the ability to speak their native language or, in some cases, hating it altogether. Speaking one’s language is very important and as Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head and if you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart” (de Galbert, 2019, para 1). Indigenous scholars who understand the value of languages should be able to educate other Indigenous people who believe that by talking sophisticated English or French that they will be able to get a pass that will get them to be accepted in the western culture. Based on my own experience, the more an Indigenous person tries to speak the “perfect English,” the more they are confronted with sarcastic comments such as, “[Y]ou speak such good English where you learned that from?” Indigenous Africans who refuse to learn their mother tongues also risk further alienation from their communities who will view them as “foreigners,” “sellouts,” or even pretenders. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has been encouraging Africans to communicate in their native languages proudly (Wa-Thiong’o, 2016). During one of his interviews in 2016, Prof. Wa Thiong’o encouraged African writers to publish their work using native African languages. He further noted that unlike before, when all publishing houses were only located in the West, there are now publishing houses located in many African countries. He also pointed out that in this era, African scholars can still publish their work using various social media platforms and they can still have desired outcomes. Prof. Wa Thiong’o doesn’t just point to the source of the disconnect but also offers suggestions on how to reconnect. In this writing I will highlight the fact that it is good to talk about disconnection of Africans from their culture; however, it is

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better if one also talks about ways to reconnect. I will also state the impact of this disconnection on Africans and why reconnection in important.

Canadian Experience The disconnection from my culture did not just end with the Kenyan system but also in Canada. Based on my own experience, I have come to acknowledge that disconnection of African people from their culture is not just limited in the colonies but also in the West. From elementary school to high school, students of African ancestry rarely see educators with whom they can relate to. The disconnect that African people experience extends beyond the school system into the workforce. James and Turner (2017) have indicated that Black students usually have a negative experience with the education system in Canada. Some of the concerns that highlight the plight of Black students according to James and Turner (2017) include the following: • the high drop-out rate; • low self-esteem; • over-representation of Black students in non-academic schools; • low expectations; • culturally biased IQ testing; • lack of Black teachers; • lack of Black studies and Black history within the curriculum; • ignorance of teachers about Black culture and the history of Blacks in Canada; and • the assumption that Black people are not part of the fabric of Canadian society. (James & Turner, 2017, p. 13) For me, the reality of these concerns became increasingly apparent as I started working in the education sector. There were days when I was reminded that my accent was too thick for people to understand what I was saying, and this sometimes came from people who had even thicker accents than mine. Then there were days when I just felt lonely in some places since I was the only Black person there; yet most of our clientele were visible minorities just like me. As a leader of an organization that represented Black educators within the province, I interacted with parents, students, educators, and community members who dealt with various barriers that were because of their ancestry. It is through this interaction that

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I became fully aware that I was not the only one who had been disconnected from my culture and was dealing with the negative effectives of that disconnection. Like many other Black professionals, the challenges that I have encountered sometimes negatively impacted the way I execute my duties. As a Black professional in North America, there is a tendency to feel as though I had accepted my role as the “inferior profession/ scholar.” This goes back to the concept of epidermalization of inferiority that Fanon has written about. It is therefore important for us as Africans to reconnect with the culture and undo the damage that has been done by colonial education.

Reconnection One way that Africans can reconnect with their culture is through the academy where they can write and speak about the glorious Indigenous African civilization as a way of challenging the stereotype that has been put out through colonial education. As someone who is living and working in the West, I have seen firsthand how African history has been lost or distorted. The scarcity of written literature regarding rich ancient African history has made it easier for others to continue painting it as backward and “uncivilized” and this narrative has been carried on for many years. To stop the negative stereotyping of African cultures and traditions, it is important that African scholars must translate some of their rich oral traditions in written forms so that other cultures can read about them too. Literature by African scholars will also assist those Africans who were born in the Diaspora to reconnect with their African culture. This work can only be done by Africans because leaving it for others will only lead to further distortion of the African history. It is also important that Africans start using other forms of media to showcase their rich cultures so that the current generation of Africans can be able to know about it. Neo-colonial regimes in some countries are not doing enough to promote Indigenous African culture. Challenging these neo-colonial regimes should be another critical role for Indigenous African scholars. Indigenous scholars should equip themselves with the relevant skills to educate the new generation in their native countries to love themselves and appreciate their culture. The new generation requires knowledge that will boost their self-confidence and to understand that it is okay for them to be proud of their cultures and should proudly speak their native languages. The notion of punishing Indigenous students who are found speaking their mother

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tongues in schools is nothing but a continuation of colonialism in the post-colonial era. The use of native languages is also crucial here in Canada, given the fact that Canada is a multicultural society. Over the years, while working with the International Languages Program whose mandate is to teach various native languages along with African heritage to elementary students, I have seen firsthand the positive impact and the student success that come from this program. The duty to promote such classes cannot be left to school boards alone but rather to all who are concerned about the success of African students. By encouraging Africans to embrace their languages and cultures at an early age, this will assist them to be proud of their ancestry as they navigate through the educational system. The fact that there are Black people who deny their identity is no longer a myth but rather a reality that can be addressed when students are taught about who they are at an early age. African scholars must move beyond theory and transform what they have learned into action. They must recognize that while their identity may be a barrier, it can also be used as a tool for change if they embrace that identity. They need to be aware that they can no longer accept the status quo since that only benefits the colonizers. Just as their forefathers who used other tools to fight against colonialization, discrimination, and all other forms that their community has faced, Indigenous African scholars should use their education as their weapon. Current generation of Indigenous African scholars must heed the call that was made by Fanon (1963) when he wrote: Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it. In underdeveloped countries the preceding generations have both resisted the work or erosion carried out by colonialism and helped in the maturing of the struggles of today. We must rid ourselves of the habit, now that we are in the thick of the fight, of minimizing the action of our fathers or of feigning incomprehension when considering their silence and passivity. They fought as well as they could, with the arms that they possessed then; and if the echoes of their struggle have not resounded in the international arena, we must realize that the reason for this silence lies less in their lack of heroism than in the fundamentally different international situation of our time. It needed more than one native to say “We’ve had enough”; more than one peasant rising crushed, more than one demonstration put down before we could today hold our own, certain in our victory. (Fanon, 1963, p. 206)

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As scholars, African scholars must be mindful that they have the power to create change; however, that power will be useless if it is not utilized. As Fanon (1967, p. 181) writes, “[M]y final prayer: O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” Indigenous scholars must continue questioning, but more so, they must continue acting to eliminate the alienation that their communities have had to deal with. The following section is written by Kathy who is Jamaican born but lives with her family in Canada.

The Diaspora I was born in Jamaica, an island situated in the Caribbean Sea. The island was originally inhabited by the Taino and Arawak Indigenous peoples. My ancestors were enslaved Africans who survived the brutality of the Slave Trade. Revolts included tools and tactics such as their superior spiritual gifting and military training. Queen Nanny, said to be from Asante’s origin, was among the feared Africans who fought off captors and helped to establish Maroon communities across the island. These communities consisted of freed Africans who maintained their own sovereignty, culture, traditions, and spirituality. My father shares ancestral ties with the Maroons. Though there were freed communities in certain parts of the island, many of the enslaved Africans were forced to assimilate into the language, customs, and religion of the colonizers. As a result, they adopted Christianity mixed with their ancestral knowledge and spirituality, spanning to contemporary movements and religious sects. Specifically, in the mid-­twentieth century, influenced by the principles of the Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey, Rastafarianism was formed. Rastafarianism consists of different religious sects that claim different ancestral roots commingled with Judeo-Christian precepts. For example, Rastafarianism consists of three prominent groups: Bobo Shanti, the Niyabinghui, and the 12 Tribe. “This included political and economic independence, cultural pride and the reuniting and return of the worldwide African Diaspora to their ancestral continent.” These movements are greatly inspired and driven by the need to reclaim our African identity through strongly held belief in the connection of biblical ancestral lineages to African lineages. For instance, the Bobo Shanti’s name is derived from a Kumasi tribe in Ghana; however, they see their founder and current leader as the reincarnated Black Christ. In addition to the Rastafarian movements, another religious group is the Revivalists, a sect that morphs

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from Christianity and African spiritual practices. Revivalism is often equated to Obeah, even though they have different fundamental precepts and doctrines. Obeah, on the other hand, is a combination of more identifiable hardcore African traditions. Rituals include using animal blood to ward off evil or for performing healing ceremonies. Consequently, there were continuous and concerted efforts from the colonizer to ban these practices under the guise of “primitivism” but mainly because of further slave rebellions. Olaudah Equiano, according to Professor Vincent Brown, “describes slavery as a perpetual state of war … a war against the fraud raping and cruelty of slave owners” (Brown, 2020). Outlawing African rituals and practices was also an attack on Blackness. The Obeah Act of 1898 “makes it illegal to be a ‘person practicing Obeah,’ which it defines as: ‘any person who, to effect any fraudulent or unlawful purpose, or for gain, or for the purpose of frightening any person, uses, or pretends to use any occult means, or pretends to possess any supernatural power or knowledge’” (Paton, 2019). Paton (2019) also goes on to detail the unscrupulous attack on African practices and religion by the government to instill fear in enslaved Africans as well as preventing ongoing insurrections. Obeah was made illegal in 1760 before it was passed into law. This tactic came amid the Tacky Rebellion in the same period when enslaved Africans executed a brilliant plot to overthrow slavers. An examination of the rituals practiced by all the religious groups clearly reveals strong connections or similarities, for example, to rituals in Burkina Faso as narrated by Patrice Malidoma in his book, Of Water and Spirit. For instance, Malidoma’s grandfather used the blood of a slain chicken in a healing ceremony. This practice is also like Myal, a blend of African spiritual practices before the spread of Christianity in Jamaica in the eighteenth century. This adaptation stems from the influence of many West African tribes, the roots of most Afro-Jamaicans: “from the Slave Coast, Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and Bight of Biafra, and also from Fula, Walof, Dyula, Yoruba, Igboo, and Bantu origin” where similar practices are noted (Alleyne, 1988, 28–61). It is also important to note that in Revivalism, though foreign and ancestral spirits are conjured, and certain rituals performed, there is a fundamental belief in the triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. Ultimately, my understanding of the Divine and the world has been shaped by these doctrines and practices, especially since my mother was a Revivalist. My mother was often met with a lot of scorn and shame because of the perceived strangeness and backwardness of her spirituality, particularly by

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conservative Christians. One day my mother showed up at my primary school unannounced. She was decked out in her red, crisped, pleated revival uniform, her head wrapped with a White turban, two braids dropped to both sides. All eyes immediately turned toward her. My sister and I felt so humiliated. Moreover, the rift in my family came especially from my aunt who was a Pentecostal Christian healer. A fundamental precept of Pentecost is that there is no Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that Christ was God on earth who ascended back to heaven unto himself. Though puzzled by the spiritual fragmentations, I was fascinated by the fruits of the Spirit and the gifts of healing and prophecy. I was even more puzzled. This loving God and giver of good gifts whom my aunt was so excited and eager to share with my older cousins were only interested in saving adults. That same evening, I went into my room. I cried. I felt so hurt. I asked God why he rejected me. I felt that I was supposed to be one of His chosen’s. I was about 11 years old. This moment sparked my curiosity. I eventually got baptized in a Church of God where my uncle was the pastor, and the next day received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. However, later my experience triggered and warranted even more investigation about the Divine and African ancestry, particularly their connection to the Creator. It is sufficient to say that “theologically, the ongoing denial, validity and power of African religions occur because the theologies of the Christian leaders were constructed within the cultural framework of Western societies” (Kirwen, XIX). Kirwen also alludes to this perpetual warfare as Brown (2017) conceptualizes; however, it is also important to note the internal warfare that exists: personal and communal. I, too, also characterize my own lived experience growing up in Jamaica and my lived experience in Canada as an ongoing battle of learning and unlearning. What I hold on to though is not the hostility, but the beauty of the hostility. I have come to learn and understand the vastness of my African history. Therefore, I have learned that it is important to look beyond the colonial gaze and look to the hope of the past, the present, and the future. This is the propeller that kept the engine of liberation moving for centuries. My ancestors utilized every tool of the natural and spiritual world to build communities and to challenge the brutalization of chattel slavery. Ladies wove messages in hair braids. Men used the drums to send messages. Stories echoed around campfires. Some were didactic, like the Anansi stories. Prayers were sent up for healing or rituals performed. Hope was kept alive. I used these coordinates to map and

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navigate specific social terrains in this global-cultural and political world. I embrace every spark, every crackle of the Afro-Jamaican fire that lights my journey for the quest of my ancestral past and future, the great terrain of life, “the soul of the universe or the soul of life” that Paulo Coelho etched in his novel, The Alchemist. This rhythm is the treasure I hold so dear to me. This rhythm is my entry point to challenge systems and structures. It is the beating of the drum to every dance and to every song I have ever come to hear. Before bedtime, my mom used to place a pale of water with a leaf from the tree of life beside her bedside. The tree of life symbolizes renewal, purity, spiritual cleansing, healing, and protection against evil spirits. In addition, my mother used to wet our yard first thing each morning with water to purify the environment of bad omens or possible traps of an unknown or known enemy. My mother also burned incenses frequently: frankincense and myrrh, especially when she sensed the presence of an unwelcome spirit or entity. Growing up in Jamaica, I had only visited the doctor once throughout my sixteen years living on the island. Our medicines were a stone throw away, including cerasee vine running on fences, tamarind leaves used to prepare a steamed bath to cure measles and flu like illnesses, saps of White rum mixed with scorpions, pimento seeds and other undistinguishable roots used on the stomach, head, or forehead for pain. When I was about age six, I came down with an extremely bad tummy ache. My grandmother heard my wailing, and she called me on her verandah and directed me to her medicine cabinet. Of course, she had remedies for all ailments. She pointed to a bottle containing a concoction of rum, a dead scorpion, and pimento seeds, took it, and poured some in the palm of her hand and rubbed my belly. Within an hour, I was out and about playing with my cousins with no sign of ever being in pain. I did not fully understand the significance of these practices; however, I have come to realize that I have internalized them and used them to carve, map, and navigate spaces.

Conclusion The Dogon culture is extremely profound and rich in knowledge and values that you can see in the young generation, even though it is not very practiced by young people. Dogon are the rare tribe who kept their tradition and culture untouched and are still known as the most valuable culture cited in the world if I can say it loudly and clearly. There is little doubt

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that tourism has changed elements of Dogon life. Attracted by published accounts of mysterious cliff dwellings, exquisite wood carvings, and exotic dances, outsiders began arriving in Pays Dogon in the early 1960s. Some villages along the escarpment now have tourist lodges, while guides offer visitors an opportunity to climb up cliff structures and explore settlements on the top of the plateau. In some cases, entire villages have become involved in tourism. For a fee, village elders may be willing to arrange a private mask dance for visitors. Contact with outsiders has also created social and economic changes where young Dogon men have opted out of subsistence agriculture in favor of wage jobs. The influx of outsiders has contributed to other problems. Granary doors, metal locks, Dogon statuettes, and antique ladders are highly valued by European, American, and Asian art collectors. In some cases, 600-year-old items have been removed from burial caves for sale to outsiders. Although the government of Mali has legislation in place to stop the illegal export of cultural antiquities, laws remain easy to circumvent. Like Mexican narco traffickers, sophisticated smuggling networks have emerged to transport artifacts from the poorest villages to eager buyers (Hammer, 2009). Another threat to Dogon heritage has been the gradual abandonment of cliff-side villages. To facilitate protection of Dogon and Tellem cliff dwellings, 400,000 hectares that include 250 villages located around the Bandiagara Escarpment were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989. In addition, efforts have been implemented by the Malian government and external organizations to rehabilitate some cliff dwellings. In the late 1980s the government took steps to protect the escarpment and surrounding areas through a plan that disperses tourist facilities and camps along a marked itinerary. Despite the good intentions, UNESCO status has created problems. For example, a school and Catholic church constructed in the village of Kani Kombole had to be rebuilt to conform to World Heritage Site guidelines mandating the use of traditional building materials (Deursen & Raaphost, 2014). Adding to other problems, Mali has suffered from severe civil unrest since 2012, because of fights involving Tuareg separatists and groups allied with al-Qaeda terrorists. The focus of conflict extends across a wide region along the country’s borders with Mauritania, Niger, and Burkina Faso including the ancient city of Timbuktu and the region north of Mopti. Along with sporadic violence, the kidnapping of foreigners has

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prompted the United States and many other countries to issue travel advisories and warnings. Mali’s tourism industry, among its largest producers of revenue, has been hard hit, with tourist visits declining from 190,000 in 2008 to 168,000 in 2014. Although impacted by forces outside the control of its people, the Bandiagara Escarpment remains among West Africa’s magical places. Walking narrow pathways between mud-covered houses and round granaries, it’s possible to imagine Africa as it appeared when Marcel Griaule first visited Pays Dogon in the 1930s. Within a society where traditions are passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth, intangible elements of culture are fragile and easily lost. Indeed, with increasing numbers of Dogon following Islam or Christianity, the frequency of dama ceremonies has declined in many villages. For its part, tourism has played a role in keeping the dama alive for visitors, but also for younger generations of Dogon who are interested in learning about the traditions of their ancestors. As a member of Africans living and working in the West, I believe we must use our lived experiences to mentor and guide others so that community members who are dealing with various barriers can have a successful experience and a hopeful future. The idea of mentoring others is not new to people of African descent, as it is part of the African philosophy that is guided by the spirit of Ubuntu. This was ingrained in me while growing up. The spirit of Ubuntu emphasizes seeing oneself through others. Through the spirit of Ubuntu humanity is dependent on others. Apart from playing a leading role in addressing the challenges that Indigenous people face in the Diaspora, Diaspora Africans can play an even more significant role in their home countries, especially in this post-colonial era. Many Africans reject the notion that the North American society has entirely accepted them regardless of their achievements. For such Africans, they will always be viewed as the other. Despite these challenges, people of African ancestry should not accept the status quo. It is more crucial than ever in this post-colonial era for Africans to continue pushing the boundaries so that they can claim their rightfully earned status. As a woman of Jamaican origin, on my journey of learning and unlearning, I often find myself alternating between spaces of Blackness. Stuart Hall conceptualizes each space requiring a specific question and a specific moment of the Black in popular Black culture (Hall, 2004). My specific moment and specific questions started with the denial that Kirwen speaks

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about which is also akin to the racialization that I experienced immigrating to Canada at the age of 16. I became racialized into an identity that I did not know how to embrace as Blackness. This concept was new to me. I also understood that Blackness was a new identity that dictated my social standings and access to resources including education. I quickly developed an awareness of the color codedness of employment, entertainment, religion, and education. Nevertheless, this epiphany sparked a heightened level of passion to learn more about my African heritage. This flame was fanned by the inequities in schools that I witnessed, not only with my own children but also as a classroom teacher. To cope, I tried to separate my spirituality from my lived experience, “failing to recognize the fragmentation and departmentalization of who we are as a people” (Wane 160). This process caused great dissonance and mental fatigue which were very short-­ lived. I was quickly reminded of the greatness of my ancestors, elders, parents, aunts and uncles, and community. Paradoxically, systemic oppression is a constant reminder of not only what my ancestors endured, but of the greatness of their endurance. There is an unfathomable strength even in our unpleasantries, what I term as the solidarity of Blackness. I learned to dig my heels in the face of oppression. I sing my mother’s spirituals when I feel a layer of depression. I use water, olive oil, or burn a candle to cleanse the environment when I sense negative energy. I learned how to acknowledge a greater presence from my aunt and my mother. I learned how to transition to prayer when I feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and intimidated by the thought of sharing my experience. I used spiritual languages and our cultural languages to fight on all fronts. It is this collective force that binds us together: past, present, and future generations of Africans. Dei (2014) writes, “[E]ducation either does something to you, or it does something for you. Education can be misdirected to constitute ‘miseducation.’” African scholars must use their education and their life experience for the benefit of their communities. While as scholars they have a sense of responsibility to the entire humanity, that responsibility must first start with their own communities. By using their own lived experiences that include alienation, discrimination, and several other challenges, African scholars can and should be the best advocates within their communities so that others can overcome these challenges. Indigenous African scholars have a responsibility to speak on behalf of their communities and assist community members to gain what Dei (2014) has described as critical consciousness of themselves and of their

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place in communities. Education alone cannot challenge the status quo; therefore, Indigenous African scholars must take personal responsibility on top of their education in challenging the status quo.1

References Adyanga, F. (2012). Critical analysis of the production of western knowledge and its implications for Indigenous knowledge and decolonization. Journal of Black Studies, XX(X), 1–21. Alleyne, M. C. (1988). Roots of Jamaican culture. Pluto Press. Anand, D. (2007). Western colonial representation of the other: The case of exotic Tibet. New Political Science, 29(1), 23–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393 140601170685 Bourdieux, P. 1997. Outline of a theory of practice. Translated by R. Nice. Cambridge University Press. Brown, A. D. (2017). Identity work and organizational identification. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19, 296–317. Brown, V. (2020, March). 1776 Salon Tacky’s Revolt: The story of an Atlantic Slave War. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiJyfr_wo80 Corsane, G. (Ed.). (2005). Heritage, museums and galleries: An introductory reader. Routledge. de Galbert, P. (2019). My favorite Nelson Mandela (mis)quote. Harvard Graduate School of Education. https://scholar.harvard.edu/pierredegalbert/node/ 632263 Dei, G.  J. S. (2010). Rereading Fanon for his pedagogy and implications for schooling and education. In G. J. S. Dei & M. Simmons (Eds.), Fanon and education: Thinking through pedagogical possibilities (pp. 1–28). Peter Lang. Dei, G.  J. S. (2014). Personal reflections on anti-racism education for a global context. Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres on Education, 15, 239–249. Deursen & Raaphost. (2014). Proud to be Dogon: An exploration of the local perspective on cultural tourism and cultural heritage management in Dogon country, Mali. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 14(1–2), 67–80. DNAFLA. (1980). janvier. La Direction Nationale de l’Alphab’etisation Fonctionelle et de la Linguistique Appliquée (D.N.A.F.L.A.). DNAFLA. Drabo, A. (Producer and Director). (1997). Taafe Fanga (skirt of power). Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, White masks. Grove Press. 1  With deep gratitude and appreciation, we dedicate this chapter to our beloved brother and friend, Leonard Wandili, who has gone on before us. Your spirit and work live in our hearts and thoughts.

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George T. Stride, George, T., & Ifeka, C. (1981). Peoples and empires of West Africa; West Africa in history, 1000–1800. Publishing Company Profile: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. Griaule, M. (1970). His conversations with Ogotemeli. Oxford University Press. Hammer, M. R. (2009). The intercultural development inventory. In M.A. Moodian (Ed.). Contemporary leadership and intercultural competence. Sage. Heleta, S. (2018). Decolonizing knowledge in South Africa: Dismantling the ‘pedagogy of big lies’. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 40(2), 48–65. http://africanfilmny.org/archive/synops/af062.html https://minorityrights.org/minorities/rastafarians/ https://www.everyculture.com/Ja-­Ma/Mali.html#ixzz6IqukmlDD Ilmi, A. A. (2012). Living the Indigenous ways of knowing. The African self and a holistic way of life. Journal of Pan African Studies, 4(9), 148–160. Iseke-Barnes, J. (2005). Misrepresentations of Indigenous history and science. Public broadcasting, the internet, and education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(2), 149–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01596300500143112 James, C. E., & Turner, T. (2017). Towards race equity in education: The schooling of Black students in the Greater Toronto area. https://edu.yorku.ca/ files/2017/04/Towards-­Race-­Equity-­in-­Education-­April-­2017.pdf Olaloku-Teriba, A. (2018). Afro-Pessimism and the (un) logic of anti-blackness. Historical Materialism, 26(2), 96–122. Paton, D. (2019, July). The racist history of Jamaica’s Obeah laws. https://www. historyworkshop.org.uk/the-­racist-­history-­of-­jamaicas-­obeah-­laws/ Understanding Stuart Hall SAGE Publications Ltd. https://uk.sagepub.com/ en-gb/eur/understanding-stuart-hall/book224933. | SAGE Publications Ltd. WebMarch 2004 | 222 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd. Wa-Thiong’o, N. (2016). Interview on Citizen TV Kenya. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=fSJN0CamI9w

CHAPTER 6

Ubuntu: An Educational Tool to Dismantle Patriarchy—Voices from the Women Community Elders Rachael Kalaba

Introduction Promoting gender equality and inclusion is a crucial aspect of social and economic development in Africa. Despite the efforts of post-Beijing policies and activism in Zambia, the country’s gender agenda has broadly adopted Western-centric feminist approaches, disregarding the traditional African methodologies, such as Ubuntu, that have proven to be effective in managing gender inclusion. This chapter explores the contribution of Ubuntu as an educational tool in fostering gender equality and inclusion in Zambia. Using a critical lens, the Ubuntu educational model has strengthened the effectiveness of the Indigenous institutions and practices of grassroots women communities of Zambia in promoting women’s participation and creating egalitarian gender relationships.

R. Kalaba (*) Ontario Institute for Studies of Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_6

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This chapter critiques the tendency of the African and Zambian gender agenda to adopt Western-centric methodologies. The chapter argues that a greater emphasis on traditional African methods such as Ubuntu could lead to a more comprehensive and culturally relevant approach to gender equality and inclusion. The analysis draws from practical and theoretical perspectives to demonstrate the effectiveness of Ubuntu as an educational tool in addressing social, political, and economic inclusion. This chapter highlights the need to acknowledge and incorporate traditional African methodologies into the larger discourse on gender equality and inclusion in Zambia and beyond. Doing so, Ubuntu, as an educational tool, aims to contribute to a more inclusive and culturally sensitive approach to promoting gender equality and dignity among genders. The book chapter is about the voices of the community elders in Zambia. The chapter is about the community voices of women and how they preserve the concept of Ubuntu at the grassroots level. The stories talk about the role of women in providing education to their communities. The chapter explores how women have dismantled patriarchy in their line of work and grounded their work and values on African Indigenous knowledge using Ubuntu. As an adult educator, advocate, and emerging scholar in International Development and Comparative Education, I realize how important the roles of these older women are and how they have continued to be in the shadows of our communities and our nations and, most of all, in our academic articles. One of the reflections is centered on the Bemba proverb, ‘Umunwe Umo Tausala Nda’, meaning one finger cannot pick lice. This proverb, as I introspect, speaks more of how the community is a collective in providing support. The chapter is centered on Ubuntu; one would ask, what do you mean? The first aspect of Ubuntu is ‘I am because you are’, and the most famous leader in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, used this concept many times as part of the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation and the interim constitution of South African Constitution in 1993 which states: There is a need for understanding, but not for vengeance, a need for reparation, but not for retaliation, a need for Ubuntu but not for victimization. (Nolte & Downing, 2019, p. 9)

The concept of Ubuntu is value driven. Perezts et al. (2019) argue that Ubuntu leadership is value-driven leadership, and  Mangwegape  (2019)

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points out that the role of leaders in communities is to bring meaning and hope to situations. The purpose-making of leaders in the Ubuntu leadership contends that Indigenous African traditions define leaders as the medium of hope and chanel for purpose (Khoza, 1994; Metz, 2020). Emphasizes the importance of Ubuntu values which are the collective solidarity of communities and the need to have the Ubuntu principles be transmitted in management practices. Ubuntu explores collective solidarity and is centered on the values/principles of leading. The chapter will base the discussion on the importance of values for school leaders who work in the African context and need to explore new paths for education in Africa by theoretically and practically interrogating and re-visioning education in the African culture and contexts (Mboyo, 2016). The framework explores epistemological approaches to incorporating Ubuntu values and leadership principles and how this is relevant in an African setup for supporting leadership development. In Africa, the idea of Ubuntu is widely used among various Bantu-­ speaking people and cultures of Southern Africa, which I am from. Tambulasi and Kayuni (2005) discuss that ‘Ubuntu’ is pronounced differently, though meaning the same thing as ‘humanness’. For the Chewa speaking of Zambia, Ubuntu is Umnthu, which is the same for my Lunda and Bemba heritage and is called Umunthu. Among the Venda speakers of South Africa, it is known as Vhutu. In contrast, it is known as Ubuntu among the Nguni-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, namely the Xhosa, the Zulu, the Ndebele, and the Ngwane peoples. Tambulasi and Kayuni (2005) argue that the Bantu language is spoken among 130 million people in Southern Africa. Southern African countries include Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), and Malawi. Critical scholars in African Indigenous knowledge (Tambulasi & Kayuni, 2005; Oviawe, 2016; Dei, 2020) contest that the fundamental gesture of Ubuntu is the manner of giving, as a reciprocal act of sharing of resources, deep connectedness, and solidarity. The chapter looks at the role of education in dismantling patriarchy by revisiting women’s stories in Zambia. Ubuntu as an act of sharing takes me back to my hometown of Ndola— as a young Zambian female growing up on the dusty roads of Lubuto in Zambia. In my eyes, it was a village of people that presented an extraordinary example of a community supporting its members daily. One of the vivid examples I remember was a funeral in our neighborhood, a team of

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older women mobilized themselves, went to the funeral house, and were integral in the deceased having a dignified celebration of life. In short order, these women had collected and prepared food and money to feed the mourner. This act is something that I learned to live by and an example of what ‘Ubuntu’ is like for a community practicing the concept of caring. Before deep diving into the role of community women elders, I reflect on the impact of patriarchy globally and the continued attack on women. Some vivid examples include Afghanistan, where women have been banned from attending university, and the United States, where legislature continues to be used to perpetuate patriarchy in restricting the reproductive rights of women. This shows the need to continuously highlight women’s issues in different contexts and advocate for concepts that empower and sustain women in their whole being. One of the fundamental strategies of dismantling patriarchy is understanding how it is operationalized and its negative impacts on the lives of women.

Positionality The concept of ‘positionality’ captures the dynamic ways socially significant identity dimensions define an individual, and those identities shape their approach to scholarly investigation and explanation (Maher & Tetreault, 2001; St. Louis & Barton, 2002). I enter this space as a Black, African, Zambian woman. I am a first-generation female graduate entering the University of Toronto and centering work on international development as a Ph.D. student in adult education and community development. This chapter is a self-reflection on the process of self, my role as an emerging scholar in my community, and how positionalities influence this chapter. I take time to question the concept of positionality and the role I play as an emerging scholar. As I reflect on my education journey, having been educated in Zambia, which is a British colony and has a Western colonial education setting, I lived in a society with a mixture of Western Christian ways of knowing and being in my journey and a quest for knowledge and the question of how I learned as an adult educator and learner, and the influence of elders in my community. I reflect on the Wane (2006) observation on the need to engage in these dialogues of decolonization and the holistic aspect of these engagements. Wane further encourages scholars to ask what they want to achieve; for instance, does one want to engage in a dialogue as an exercise to

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stimulate intellectual abilities, or does one want to write a counter-­ discourse on transformative anti-colonial learning? To be able to talk about dismantling patriarchy, I need to self-­decolonize (Wane, 2006, p. 2). The process of self-decolonizing is often manifested in the form of reflexivity. One is faced with questioning the politics of Western educational thought that do not speak to the experiences of an African woman. Therefore, dismantling patriarchy involves discussing decolonization, colonization, education, ways of knowing, and knowledge mobilization. The quest for dismantling patriarchy is a crucial element of the decolonization agenda. It is embedded in my reflection of Wane (2006) on the importance of reflexivity. This chapter reflects on my transformative learning, the need to decolonize and recenter women in education, and their critical role in transforming communities through Ubuntu. In this context, I question myself as an adult learner and how I have been influenced by my education, Western knowledge in most instances, and the role and impact of women elders in my community. How can I share the women’s stories from the communities, represent their views, and share their lived experiences with respect, be non-judgmental, and play the role of a listener and interpreter? How can I extend the Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being? Furthermore, how can I challenge the often-extractive role of research in academia in women’s lives and ownership of knowledge (Smith, 2021; Kovach, 2021)? This reflection contextualizes my academic and religious background as a Black African Zambian woman. My learning and education are centered on Western education, Christian, and Indigenous knowledge. As part of my positionality, I realize the need to be reflective. One is faced with questioning the politics of Western educational thought that do not speak to the experiences of an African woman and the silence of African women academics in the literary world (Wane, 2006). As a Zambian woman who grew up in the Copperbelt Province and later worked in international development, I had unending doubts and questions about concepts relating to women and gender. Many questions were embedded in the type of curriculum used in my formal education, and I learned more about Western history than my own culture and ways of living academically. In my quest to better understand the role of our women elders through the Ubuntu concept and the positive impacts of dismantling patriarchy on education, I reflected on the impact of religion and its role in promoting patriarchy. I questioned in my Church, only men

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were allowed to preach and be at the altar and women were expected to clean the church; I asked what God would not want to hear my prayers. As a Zambian woman, I faced many challenges that can be defined as social, cultural, systematic, and historical; I realize that most times, the women were the ones who supported and gave me advice and provided that social and economic support. I further acknowledge the harmful impact of patriarchy on our societies; patriarchy did not just oppress my being as a woman but forced me to be a shadow of myself. Indeed, it is through the process of self-decolonization that I am in the process of finding myself. The chapter is centered on my communities’ experiences, including my home village of great-grandmothers, grandmothers, aunties, cousins, and sisters who lead families and communities. In understanding my positionally, Abidogun and Falola (2020) describe African education as a ‘complex configuration of Indigenous, Islamic or Muslim, and western education systems constituting, in many ways … a multi-tiered system with Indigenous education as its center, while Islamic or Muslim and western education act as official nation-state systems’ (Abidogun & Falola, 2020, p. 5). The chapter will center on lived experiences, and stories from the grassroots will be done through self-reflexivity and praxis. In turn, this will be centered on Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra of ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ and create an authentic ‘voice’ in academia, sharing our lived experiences as African Black women in education, specifically as Zambian women. Furthermore, I will center my understanding of Ubuntu as a concept centering on decolonization, education, ways of knowing, and knowledge mobilization. The quest for dismantling patriarchy is embedded in my reflection on Wane (2006), who states: I grew up knowing that Europeans had dubbed Africa ‘The Dark Continent.’ That expression was first used in the Nineteenth Century. Africans have been the subject of consistent and bewildering scholarship, constantly proving that they were not inferior human beings even when there was genuine knowledge. (p. 4)

I founded the Zambia Women Institute of Leadership and Learning (ZAMWILL). ZAMWILL is a Zambian, female-led organization working with women and girls in communities to support women and girls in education and leadership. In this book chapter, I will analyze community women’s leadership experiences and suggest how local knowledge can be

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drawn to bring about ways for Zambian women to lead in their communities. Most scholars have noted that lived experience involves the research participants and the researcher. For the researcher, the lived experience is the process of the phenomenological procedure—the methodological movement among description, reduction, and interpretation (Anderson, 2006). In this chapter, I will draw on my lived experiences as the founder of ZAMWILL and my Zambian woman ontological and epistemological perspectives to revisit the Zambian women’s leadership analysis in the Zambian context. Positionality has been operationalized as reflexivity, an activity in which a researcher identifies, examines, and owns their backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and biases to strengthen research quality (Berger, 2015; Charmaz, 2014; Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Patton, 2002; Sochacka et al., 2017). In evaluating and revisiting Zambian women elders, I reflect on the impact of colonization on my lived experience as a Zambian woman. Creswell and Creswell (2018) suggest that statements describing past experiences with the research problem, participants, or setting may shape interpretations throughout the research process. Charmaz (2014) represents a stance in which the researchers ‘bring themselves into the process’ and informs ‘how the researcher conducts [their] research, relates to the research participants, and represents [participants] in written reports’ (Charmaz, 2014, p.  344). To help scaffold this reflection, Sochacka et  al. (2017) propose a three-tiered model of reflexivity: (1) ontological and epistemological assumptions, (2) values, and (3) experiences. The aim is not ‘to reduce the “subjectivity” of interpretive research’ or ‘to give the impression that interpretivism research is “objective”’ (Sochacka et al., 2017, p. 4) but to acknowledge and harness subjective understandings to increase quality (Banks, 1998; Sochacka et al., 2017). Nevertheless, Creswell and Creswell warn that ‘researchers need to limit their discussion about personal experiences so that they do not override the importance of the content or methods in a study’ (Creswell & Creswell, 2018, p. 256).

My Story I grew up on the Copperbelt and was exposed to community life and how to continue influencing. I reflected more when I worked in Kitwe’s four compounds—Kawama, Kamatipa, Twatasha, and Racecourse—as a field officer supporting families affected by HIV and AIDS.  The experience

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exposed me to the importance of community, especially for child-headed families. I learned the role women played in ensuring that these children continued to live and have everyday life. The impact of these women’s household visitation created a sense of hope and continuity for the children; as I write, most of these children have since gone into universities and are achieving socio-economic successes. I acknowledge the role that the vital themes of nurturing, trust, and reciprocity played in the co-­ creation of these enduring experiences. In reflecting on the Ubuntu concept, the women did bring the Ubuntu values of community, caring, and love. Nolte and Downung (2019) argue that the main attribute of Ubuntu is that identities are formed through community relations, as a person’s existence is who they are because of the presence and relationship with others and coexistence with them. The phrase ‘I am because we are’ encapsulates the interconnections between people and summarizes solidarity. Growing up and seeing women’s positive influence in communities and my life, I launched the ZAMWILL project. I used the concept of Ubuntu— the framework of mentoring and learning for our girls and women in communities. I took the learnings from my mother and grandmother that positively influenced me to be who I am today, and the value of reciprocity comes to mind as an Ubuntu value. I question the Western concepts of how knowledge is given to us, especially as an academic; I realized that we often use a Western framework of mentorship, which usually does not speak to my lived experience. An example of the approach, which is more individualistic and positivistic, is compared to Ubuntu which is centered on the values of sensitivity, love, care, and compassion. I realized that the ideals my women elders used to give me counsel stayed with me more than the Western approach, which is more like a given chore for a particular time and quickly forgotten. Using the Ubuntu philosophy, I noted the approach’s positive impact in my life and on the girls and women ZAMWILL is using to provide mentorship. Oviawe’s (2016) and other critical scholars’ Western critic approaches to Western ethics are rooted in the individual—the autonomous and responsible decision-making individual—while Ubuntu relies on the community. However, there is no individual viewpoint in using the Ubuntu concept, or the community decides how to do mentorship. The position of Ubuntu views an individual as being nothing without the community and the community as nothing without the individual. Even though Western theories focus on the individual, the Ubuntu as a concept emphasizes the relationality between

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the individual and the community. Considering the above, I seek to conceptualize African Ubuntu philosophy as an educational tool that should be regarded when mentoring girls in the African context.

The Colonial History of Zambian Education According to Daschuk (2013), education is and continues to be central to facilitating colonialism through erasing Indigenous knowledge, languages, cultural and spiritual expressions, traditional teaching methods, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Against this background, I reflect on the need to re-evaluate stories of African women and their role in education. The chapter emphasizes the need to talk about the role of African women in education through Ubuntu and the continued quest of dismantling patriarchy—which is part of the colonial construct; I am influenced by the need to transform how we learn and teach our communities and go back to the basics. Patriarchy in this chapter is defined as a social construct marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line, and broadly control by men of a disproportionately large. Share of power (Tamale, 2020). Feminist scholar Tamale (2020) argues that the world’s major religions, from Christianity to Islam, reinforce patriarchal social organization. It is not only dominant religions imposed by colonialism that control through domination and supremacy of the male line, however, but many ancestral religions also are equally as patriarchal and have been exploited by those in power—at times influenced using anti-colonial rhetoric—to intimidate and control the masses generally and women specifically (Tamale, 2020). In the following section, I will explore how education was a colonial tool in Zambia. The history of Zambia dates to the 1800s when Zambia was colonized by a mining company owned by Cecil Rhodes. The progression of education in the country is well documented by Kelly (1999). Kelly notes that Zambia’s colonial history has contributed to how education in Zambia is shaped through three phases of colonization: the mining company rule, colonial office rule, and the federation rule. The mining company rule was from 1891 to 1924, and the colonial office rule by the British was from 1924 to 1953. The federation rule, which had three SSA countries (Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi) under the British government, ran from 1953 to 1963. Historically, Zambia’s colonial regime negatively

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impacted the social economics and social services development for Indigenous Black Zambians, especially women, regarding the type of education and socialization (Kelly, 1999). Individuals championed egoism, with each being for themselves and God for us all, as taught by the colonialist mentality of capitalism. With deep reflection, one would note that the negative effect of colonialism on Zambia’s economic development and education structures negatively impacted women compared to men (Kelly, 1999).

Understanding Patriarchy and Its Impact on the Education of Women and Girls Ngugi WA Thiong’o (1986) states that to control people’s culture and way of thinking is to maintain their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. Furthermore, colonial education can be characterized by the absence of learning about the multiplicity of different knowledge. Ngugi argued that the colonial system of education, in addition to its apartheid racial demarcation, had the structure of a pyramid: a broad primary base, a narrowing secondary middle, and an even narrower university apex, in that language and literature were taking us further from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds. I center my arguments on why colonial educational systems in the African context did not generate many benefits for African women. Further reflection on the colonial educational systems indicates that they were able to infiltrate African societies because Africans lacked structured education systems. Margaret Kovach (2021) also acknowledges that Indigenous communities are not widely recognized; in this case, I would refer to African Indigenous ways of being and doing. Scholars have come to an understanding that whether formally or informally, African Indigenous education, in this context of Ubuntu ways of teaching, has prepared young people and communities to take up specific responsibilities they were going to shoulder as adults. It was an education for life with all its complexities, aimed at satisfying personal needs, promoting individual talents’ growth, and serving our community. This aspect of Ubuntu teaching and learning facilitated the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next, as the case with me and my women elders give approach. As a Black female scholar and African, I acknowledge the different ways of learning that I had through my communities and from women elders

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whose ‘undefined role’ was to make sure I got the necessary values and education that would allow me to navigate myself in life as a female, sister, aunt, mother, and daughter. These social teachings are undocumented but gave me the education that has supported my daily lifestyle within and outside of Zambia. This is problematic for Western ways of learning, as it results in methodological and epistemological discrimination (Kovach, 2021). The Ubuntu life concept of education is holistic and based on an integrative worldview. All life to the human is total; all human activities are closely interrelated. This has as its underlying principle the sanctity of the person’s spirituality and essentiality. This essentialist view of the person confers value to their personality. All else their labor and achievements flow from this value system. Even personal shortcomings cannot invalidate it. In addition, for Ubuntu, politics defines duties and responsibilities alongside obligations and rights. All these relate to the various activities that have to do with survival. The survival concept is continuing, dynamic, and dialectical. The fundamental principle at the basis of this conception is a moral one. In reviewing different scholars (Bangura, 2005; Emeagwali, 2020; Esiobu, 2021), Ubuntu’s principle is that educators should be concerned about formal and informal education and how the approaches to learning and teaching are undergirded by humanity or fellow feeling toward others. Ubuntu should be considered along with the idea of the socialization effects of educational environments and the possibilities of reinforcement of these notions and contexts; the implications for women as part of the educational process appear vital. This chapter acknowledges the significant relationship between Western and Indigenous ways of teaching and learning. But how can we dismantle patriarchy in education with such approaches? Based on my reflections, this section gave an overview of education as a tool for colonization and the positives of using Ubuntu approaches in dismantling the norms of education.

Women’s Role in Education Under the aegis of animation thus understood, the task of dismantling patriarchy in education using Ubuntu requires multilateral processes of understanding and unpacking the central assumptions of domination, patriarchy, racism, and ethnocentrism that continue to glue the academy’s privileges in place; second, to dissenter patriarchy requires dismantling of

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institutional system-wide and centering of the Indigenous renaissance and its empowering, intercultural diplomacy. The work of Badri and Tripp (2017) and Sadiqi (2016) contest that women’s movements from within the continent have been untiring in bringing to the table the issues and concerns that affect African women, not only in national or regional contexts but on a global scale, which have impacted the women’s rights agenda in meaningful ways. In the nationalist era, Zambia has had its share of women elders, such as Mama Julia Chikamoneka, Lucy Sichone, Inonge Wina, Emily Sikazwe, Doreen Mwamba, and Mulenga Kapwepwe, who have been at the forefront of women’s movements in Zambia. African women mobilized to resist unfair colonial policies. Current efforts are directed at shaping policy, institutions, and discourse around women’s political rights, economic empowerment, gender equity, and democratization (Gouws & Coetzee, 2019; Bouilly et al., 2016). One of the African Proverbs says, ‘Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’. Education research centered on colonization can only glorify the colonizer and perpetuate patriarchy. Yacob-Haliso and Falola (2021) argue that its time that greater emphasis be placed on research on African women done by African women, for African women. This can lead to greater levels of construct and content validity which can in turn heighten the quality of the research and the ability of the voices of African women to be heard in a universal manner. The authors also argue that for research for women by women to be desirable and attainable, enabling conditions under which to bloom both quantitatively and qualitatively should be given, especially in academic spaces. The critical question that comes into play is ‘who researches African women?’. Yacob-Haliso and Falola (2021) argue that it’s not about ‘who’; the research does not presuppose that this is only relevant to persons of African descent; that would be retrogressive and counterproductive. Instead, the issue at stake is to what extent these other studies are advantaged and whether the already extant proliferation of studies by Africans is similarly accepted as being of prime privilege and importance within African women’s education (Yacob-Haliso & Falola 2021). I agree with this notion as we reflect and the position of women in education. However, we must assess how scholars can develop, record, and most effectively utilize available skills, knowledge, and tools of willing change agents and share successful decolonizing practices across disciplines, institutions, and regions. I propose the concept of the Ubuntu framework. Ubuntu has

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collective values and requires collaborative working with communities, and women’s roles in education have become critical. The next section talks about the role of Ubuntu in the Zambian context.

What Is Ubuntu in the Context of Education and Women in Zambia? Ubuntu is a form of African Indigenous knowledge and forms an Indigenous African worldview or philosophy (Goduka, 2005; Masolo, 2010; Mokgoro, 2010; Ramose, 2004). Ubuntu’s philosophical approach is non-positivistic and decenters Eurocentric and individualistic lenses in research. When using the Western lens approach, we often miss the point of critiquing African education issues intertwined with their unique social, cultural, and community observations (Oviawe, 2016). In understanding how Ubuntu is an Indigenous African worldview, Mokgoro (2010, p. 15) argues that Ubuntu is ‘a worldview of African societies and a determining factor in the formation of perceptions which influence social conduct’. The author contends that Ubuntu ‘is a humanistic orientation towards fellow beings’ (Mokgoro, 2010, p. 16). The Ubuntu framework centers on the humanistic ethos that fully complements critiquing equity and equality and emphasizes human connections and interdependence in education and people (Oviawe, 2016). Ubuntu describes and answers the social aspect and community leadership questions using the equity and equality lenses in the Zambian context. Ubuntu centers on the African Indigenous theory of humanism, African interdependency, and togetherness belief systems. Ubuntu will address critical issues of power, colonial legacies, and local history (Chisale, 2018; Metz, 2016; Mitchell & Petrovic, 2018; Oviawe, 2016; Piper, 2016; Schreiber & Tomm-Bonde, 2015; Veugelers, 2011). Ubuntu, in this aspect, locates identity and meaning-making within the collective approach instead of an individualistic approach. Reciprocal, interdependent, and mutual beneficiary are similar to Confucianism beliefs and offer a similar perception of education as intertwined with a moral imperative that serves as a foundation for an education infused with morality (Ali & Shishigu, 2020; Metz, 2007); a normative principle by which notions of personhood are constructed (Letseka, 2002; Menkiti, 2004); a ‘theory of right action’ (Metz 2007); a constitutional value (Chaskalson, 2003; Keevy, 2008); and a pedagogical principle (Letseka, 2013).

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This chapter argues that equity is a moral issue before it is an education issue. The questions raised through this chapter require a collective approach (Ubuntu), as the barriers identified will be cross-cutting and cannot be treated as stand-alone issues. Furthermore, when women are leaders in communities, literature has shown that women in Zambian communities often use the collective leadership approach (Sikazwe, 2006). Dei et al. (2022; also see Rodney, 1982; Smith, 2016; WA Thiong’o, 1986) explain that one of the many negative impacts of Western education on Indigenous, Black, Latin America, and other racialized learners is alienating and corrupting their minds and sensibilities using multiple tools, including colonial education. Furthermore, the author states that colonialism engages the Western ideology of Eurocentricity, ensuring that the world is mediated only through the Western (European) worldview (Dei et al., 2022). Having been educated in a Western approach in Zambia and Canada, I realized that I never had an opportunity to question or take up my Indigenous self and tribe knowledge. In its form, Eurocentrism created many self-doubts about my academic capabilities as a Black African and Zambian woman. I believed that speaking and writing better English was better, but I am more fluent and artistic in my Bemba language, and the learnings and teachings I learned from my women elders are in Bemba. Through my quest and narrations from my elders in Zambia, I realize the Bemba language, in its ways, is rich with idioms, sayings, and proverbs that have supported my daily learning. I recognize that Bemba as a language is centered on matriarchy and the power of women, which is absent in the colonial education contexts to which I have been exposed. Also, colonialism places Western science at the top of knowledge hierarchies and subjugates all other knowledge to grant the West colonial dominance over other knowledge forms (Dei et  al., 2022, citing Dei 2000; Solomon, 2017; Waldram, 2013). The section reflects on the harmful impact that colonization has had on me and the women in my community. Dei et al. (2022) explain the continued disengagement that has been instrumentalized through colonial educational policies, practices, and structures that inform education delivery and undermine academic achievement for racialized students like me. As a Black African woman pursuing her Ph.D., I reflect on how colonized institutions such as the University of Toronto influence my learning, how this impacts my academic journey as an emerging scholar, and the continued patriarchy centered on academia.

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Ubuntu as a Concept of Decolonization Understanding the importance of centering African Indigenous knowledge such as Ubuntu as a concept of deconstructing patriarchy is an act of decolonization. Critical scholars such as Ndhlovu, Dei, Lopez, and Wane note that decolonization requires epistemological and ontological shifts in how we frame and practice our work as scholars, in this context, how we practice community development and education. Ubuntu is centered on collectiveness, moral, and value-based framework in engaging with communities and education (Metz, 2020). Furthermore, the concept of Ubuntu encapsulates moral norms and virtues such as kindness, generosity, compassion, benevolence, courtesy, respect, and concern for others (Assié-Lumumba, 2020). I did not realize how deep-rooted colonialism and patriarchy are in my country, education, and community. Erica Irene Daes, in her statement at the 1999 UNESCO conference, noted: Displacing systemic discrimination against Indigenous peoples created and legitimized by the cognitive frameworks of imperialism and colonialism remains humanity’s most crucial cultural challenge. Meeting this responsibility is not just a problem for the colonized and the oppressed but a defining challenge for all peoples. It is the path to a shared and sustainable future for all people. (Erica Irene Daes, United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples at the UNESCO Conference on Education, July 1999)

I realize this is my daily challenge working with women community elders and understanding how negative colonialism has had in communities. I need to continuously question and be aware of the impact of colonialism and constantly find ways of relearning and rewriting my lived experience and that of the women I work with in communities. As I reflect on the concept of Ubuntu and scholarly work, most scholars have noted the need to impart makes a case for storytelling to be integrated into the curriculum and pedagogy of education for the young impressionable minds and inculcate the values and virtues of Ubuntu early rather than later in reclaiming their self-worth in being motivated and striving for a productive society that nurtures positive impact on women and communities (Assié-Lumumba, 2020). Smith (1999) states that Indigenous epistemology is based on a spiritual worldview. The arguments of different Indigenous peoples based on spiritual relationships to the universe and to the landscape and stones, rocks, insects, and other things, seen and unseen, have been complex arguments for Western systems of knowledge to deal with or accept (Smith, 1999).

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One of the values of Ubuntu is spirituality (Oviawe, 2016). Through this reflection, I realize the need to be self-aware of the spiritual self as part of embracing the journey of dismantling patriarchy. I recognize that part of dismantling patriarchy, a colonial construct, is centered on acknowledging and embracing my spiritual self as a Black African woman. As an educator, based on my academics, I realize that my spirituality is a more significant part of my daily life as an emerging scholar. I acknowledge my prayers from my Catholic background and my ancestors’ guidance every morning. This critical aspect will guide me to embrace all forms and ways of spiritual beliefs and practices. I have further appreciated my grandmother’s teaching in my daily routines, especially after starting my Ph.D. program and reviewing my role as an adult educator. I also realize that the Ubuntu values of relationality, respect, accountability, spirituality, love, care, and reciprocity principles are critical for dismantling patriarchy and colonialism—these are part of Indigenous knowledge and learning (Wilson, 2009). Furthermore, I realize that dismantling patriarchy involves moving back into a relationship with oneself and community, respect, and reciprocity; reclaiming spirituality and storytelling become part of my sources of knowledge and learning as an adult learner and educator. The concept of spirituality enables me to search for answers to conflicting messages that may come from new knowledge acquired as part of my Ph.D. learning and migrating to a new country. In addition, as an African and Black woman, I have learned that spirituality is the vital life force that animates and connects me to the rhythms of the universe, nature, ancestors, and the community (Wane et al., 2019) (see Wheeler & Hyland, 2002). The concept of Ubuntu as a framework of education is summarized by Desmond Tutu, who said: [We do need other people and their help to form us in a profound way. You know just how you blossom in the presence of someone who believes in you, and who helps you have faith in yourself, who urges you to great thoughts and yet accepts you as who you are and not for what you have or can achieve, who does not abandon you because you have failed.]

Ubuntu as a Tool for Decolonization Education Wane and Todd (2018) explain that Indigenous knowledge perspectives have a similar role of deconstruction and decolonization in cultural and liberation psychology. My interest in Indigenous knowledge is not to

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uncover the authentic body of traditional knowledge but to have a holistic understanding of women’s role in using the Ubuntu concept to dismantle patriarchy. Wane and Todd (2018) underline the importance of decolonizing knowledge production and practices suitable for dismantling patriarchy in education. In this sense, this chapter will explore alternative concepts and tools that provide a broader foundation for dismantling patriarchy in education—re-educating self and community and creating scholarly work to dismantle the patriarchy.

Spirituality

Community

Trust

Care

Kindness

Collaboration

Sympathy

Respect

Sensitivity to the needs of others

Ubuntu values and women

The Role of Women Community Elders in Education: The Case of ZAMWILL in Zambia Zambia Women Institute of Leadership and Learning (ZAMWILL) is an organization I founded in Zambia in 2016 to understand what learning meant for me as a Zambian woman and what it meant in my quest to lead

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an organization. When I was a Country manager for an international education organization in Zambia, I realized that as much as I was working for the organization, key elements did not settle well with me, especially when I did community engagement. My understanding of learning changed when I realized that engaging in a community without women meant nothing was done. In the qualitative research, through getting stories from women elders and using the Ubuntu approach, the feedback from the girls has been life-changing in terms of how they view life and education in general. Participant A answered by asking the girls what Ubuntu means to them. for me, Ubuntu is living a life of trust and care in a community where I feel safe to talk with my aunties about life, a place where I am responsible for reciprocating what I have learned with others.

Theories and Methods While I frame this research through the theoretical lens of African Indigenous knowledge, I know that Africa is not a monolith and that tremendous diversity exists within the 54 countries, borders imposed by European colonialism. Wane cites Molefi Asante in explaining that ‘Africa is a multi-plex of different and complex cultures’ (Wane, 2005, p.  33). Therefore, in my framing, African Indigenous knowledge of Ubuntu is centered on my understanding of the community culture and way of being in the Zambian context and not generalizing the continent of Africa. Dei (1999) defines African Indigenous knowledge as ‘one that reflects the dynamic way in which the resident of an area has come to understand themselves concerning their natural environment and how they organize that folks’ knowledge of flora, fauna, cultural beliefs, and history to enhance their lives’ (p. 1). I theorize African Indigenous knowledge as a worldview that shapes the community’s relationship with the surrounding environment and is centered on the cultural, political, and economic standpoint shared orally by African People (Wane, 2005; Dei, 1999). In this framing, I also draw on Ubuntu African Indigenous philosophy mostly practiced in Southern Africa, particularly Zambia, from which I am from, and embedding the cultural beliefs as a collective. This is supported by Wane (2005), who notes that African Indigenous knowledge is particular to local areas and that understanding African culture needs to be centered on the community as a collective.

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The purpose of qualitative research is anchored on the understanding that the world or reality is not a fixed, single, agreed upon, or measurable phenomenon that is assumed to be positivist (Merriam, 2002). Furthermore, Patton (1987) defines qualitative research as ‘an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there’. The chapter will primarily employ qualitative research through narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry is a distinct form of discourse as ‘retrospective’ meaning-­making, which is the shaping and ordering of experience through storytelling (Kim, 2016). The technique will center on personal narratives in documents and oral accounts the women share (stories, interviews, and written life stories). I picked narrative inquiry as it encourages attention to emotions, non-verbal communication, and possibilities of dialogue with communities (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). Also, this method is an embodied social process, though the challenge of using this method is the aspect of boundaries. The quick questions I reflect on are the rigidity of limitations, what type of personal knowledge narratives will give the researcher and the participants socially constructed accounts and uniqueness as they recount their lived experiences. To manage the everyday challenges of this method, the following questions will be established to create the boundaries and context, who is the author, why is this story written/told, who is the audience, and is the story fact or fiction (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). This approach will support the researcher in identifying the limits of the concept and allowing creativity in exploring the narrative qualities of activities and objects whose storied character is not self-evident. One critical component is to be aware that participants and groups may use narrative and non-narrative modes of communication and meaning-making. Hence, creativity in collecting stories and being open-minded in the form of reports will be managed. Autoethnography will situate me, the researcher, in sharing my story and being critically reflexive (Trinh, 2012). The chapter aims to understand the nature of the current trends of Zambian women in taking up Ubuntu education using methods aligned with qualitative research in the form of narrative inquiry and the African Indigenous aspect of the Ubuntu philosophy. These methodological approaches are grounded in community ways of knowing and interpreting the world. They will ensure that the research findings apply to local adult education experiences. They will help me devise intervening responses from women elders working in communities, specifically with ZAMWILL.

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Notably, the method used needs to be more Western. Instead, it will be anchored on Indigenous African cultures, based on African Indigenous epistemological standpoints, to ensure that the research is culturally responsive and respectful of the communities it intends to assist. The idea can be localized, dealing with real-world situations such as adult education and community development. The component of Afro-feminism allows data collected to be compared, enabling continuous comparison of one unit of data with another to derive conceptual elements of the approach (Merriam, 2002; Tamale, 2020). Therefore, the research will utilize Afro-­ feminism theory and the Ubuntu philosophy to understand how African women and girls localize, empower, and lead in their communities using Ubuntu education and provide a basis for comparing data. The story is from the women elders in Zambian communities, and the participants were picked from rural, peri-urban, and urban communities (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018).

Language Spirituality

collectivennes

equity

Trust Ubuntu Framework for women community education

Morality

Reciprocity

Mutual beneficiary

Relationship Togetherness

Ubuntu Education Framework

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respect for self determination

embracing 'other (ed)'

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ways of knowing - transormative praxis

exercisie critical reflexivity

The process of Ubuntu Education

Conclusion Ubuntu is an education framework centered on compassion, generosity, hospitality, and the belief that all people are equal and deserve respect. The chapter reflects through storytelling and provides an alternative approach to working with women in the African context. Ubuntu as a philosophy is an ongoing reflection in providing alternative African Indigenous methods to working with women in African communities. This chapter centered on understanding how, historically, spirituality has served as a personal and communal source of liberation, solace, hope, meaning, and forgiveness for African women (Wane et al., 2019) (see Wheeler & Hyland, 2002). The writing has reflected on the impact of colonization and the need to decolonize as part of decentering patriarchy. In addition, the chapter reflected on Ubuntu as a concept of decolonization in women’s education and how it can be used as a framework.

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PART II

Identity and Ways of Knowing for the Educator and the Learner

CHAPTER 7

Knowledge Production and Colonial Myths: Centring Indigenous Knowledges Through Decolonization Andre Laylor

Introduction Colonization continues to restructure knowledge and its dissemination, especially in the academic sphere. However, there has been resistance to knowledge(s) and representations by—and of—Indigenous communities that have been excluded or misrepresented. Groups who can control the dissemination of scientific, political, and socio-cultural knowledges maintain hegemonic rule through asserting supremacy. To understand the contours of knowledge production, we must turn our gaze to history to investigate points of legitimacy, contestation, and power. However, revisiting the past is an arduous task, as the records have been distorted. Historical documents, over the course of colonization, have been

A. Laylor (*) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_7

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produced by Western nations to legitimize and control communities outside of the imperial centre (Trouillot, 1995). Pratt (2008, p.  3) in their book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation explains how European explorers used travel documents to give the “European reading publics a sense of ownership, entitlement and familiarity with respect to the distant parts of the world that were being explored, invaded, invested in, and colonized.” Points of contact between Indigenous communities and European explorers—later colonizers—were sites of power, where both grappled with imbalanced power relations that led to the domination and subordination of Indigenous communities. Through this process, European colonizers travelling from the imperial metropolis sought to control contact zones through an “obsessive need to present and re-present its peripheries and its others continually to itself” (Pratt, 2008, p. 4). There has been much struggle to destabilize dominant representations of Indigenous communities, control history, and decolonize spaces. By investigating history, authors (Akena, 2012; Brady, 2017; Savo, 2018; Thiong’o, 1986; Wane, 2006) have found that historical and cultural knowledge within Indigenous communities has been restrained, but what has been lost in this process? History, as told by European colonizers, has been viewed as a fabrication of the past to create inequalities. These inequalities establish the domination of European colonizers, privileging them as the pinnacle of knowledge creation. Through Western epistemologies of power, the reproduction of history has been used to subjugate Indigenous communities, their knowledges, and other communities, creating a single narrative of history.

History and the Past History is located as being about power and about how the powerful maintain their power. (Iseke-Barnes, 2005, p. 149)

What is history? And what is its relationship to the past? History is often understood as an objective review of the past. Historians, through historical texts, recount past events, cultures, and objects as units of historical analysis. However, the processes involved in recreating history are masked by the politics of inclusion and exclusion. History-making is as much a recollection of the past as it is a claim to power. Particularly, with the advent of colonialism, communities were intentionally deemed as inferior, alleged to not have their own histories. These communities, seen as

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lacking knowledge of their own, were captured in history through the lens of those who dominated them. This re-presentation subjugated communities in a way that excluded and delegitimized local ways of knowing. The exclusion of Indigenous epistemologies restructured European colonial powers as holding the keys to knowledge, furthering their political, economic, and social goals. Hidden behind the misrepresentations of histories are justifications for the wholesale dehumanization of Indigenous communities. History, when illuminated, is fraught with fractures that call into question the accuracy and validity of our current understanding of its colonial origins. History, if not inclusive of all histories, is a subjective project that mirrors the subjects who create it. Jenkins (1999), in speaking to knowledges produced by histories, argues that history cannot be objective because of the following reasons: . History cannot be recounted in its totality, as it is limitless. 1 2. History cannot be recovered as we cannot check it against itself. 3. History is an individual and social construct created by those who interpret its events. These challenges are what Jenkins terms as “Epistemological fragility” (p. 13), which has led to Europe’s arbitrary claims to supremacy. However, despite methodological flaws in interpreting history, historians continue to produce and search for a true history. Historians then appear, on the one hand, to be presenting cultural imperialism as an innocent mistake or lack of judgement. If the European colonizers knew better, they would do better. On the other hand, there appears to be a persistent effort throughout history to deliberately mislead and create mythical representations of subjugated communities and spaces. Said (1978) exemplifies this when he speaks of how the “Orient” is constructed to represent where a community simultaneously lives within the represented world—created by European colonizers—and outside of it. Said states, “Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (p. 3). To understand the intersections of history, we must consider the viewpoints of Indigenous communities who are also involved in creating and

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maintaining it. Also, we must carefully track power to see how it misrepresents and silences Indigenous voices. The story of Europe is a story of power that weaves itself into the production of all global histories and knowledges. Chakrabarty (1992) contends that, “only Europe … is theoretically knowable; all other histories are a matter of empirical research that fleshes out a theoretical skeleton which is substantially Europe” (p. 3). Domination is maintained through systems that perpetuate the myth of European superiority. These systems compose the academic disciplines that we know well, such as philosophy, law, social science, anthropology, and education. Concepts such as terra nullius aided the pursuit of progress by justifying the takeover of land by claiming it as empty or believing that the inhabitants could not care for the land or themselves. Pateman and Mills (2007) particularly speak of two forms of logic that were used to aid in European conquest under the guise of terra nullius. First is a “strict logic” that undermines Indigenous ties to the land and nature through the creation of a civil society. In this logic, the state of nature in which settlers found Indigenous peoples was seen as a threat to order, and a new state was required to govern human existence based on a settler contract. Second is a tempered logic where nature can be recognized, however, only in the context of the new settler state, following the laws and boundaries of the colonial government (p. 39). Here, Indigenous rights are restrained in the production of a new society that veils its will to legitimacy through treaties and legal processes. Pateman and Mills (2007) postulate, “the history on the ground is very hard to distinguish from conquest; in both America and Australia the settlers and the military used extensive violence to overcome the resistance of Native peoples and drive them off their land” (p. 43). Narratives of transition, and in particular the move from a state of uncivilized to modern capitalist communities, justify this inequality through the representation of the colonized subject as deficient. This narrative has also justified the use of violence by European colonizers towards Indigenous communities in Canada to push forward their definition of progress through the arbitrary rule of law, citizenship, and gender relations (McClintock, 1995). Stepping into the modern world is akin to entering colonized European spaces. However, this modernization project is never fulfilled for Indigenous communities as they become bound to the unceasing myths that represent an object of failure. The transition narrative always remains incomplete. For example, the myth of Canadian nation

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building is often one sided, seeing Indigenous communities as passive actors in this process. The Canadian myth glorifies the West and constructs Indigenous communities as deficient and barbaric, in need of being conquered. Smith (1999, p.  67) speaks to the myths of Indigenous communities stating, “one of the supposed characteristics of primitive peoples was that we could not use our minds or intellects. We could not invent things, we could not create institutions or history, we could not imagine, we could not produce anything of value, we did not know how to use land and other resources from the natural world, we did not practice the ‘arts’ of civilization.” “Progress” meant state-sanctioned genocide of Indigenous peoples, the institute of chattel slavery, along with the wholesale exploitation of land and natural resources.

Historicity and Post-modernism Post-modern theoretical interventions have reshaped the boundaries of history and knowledge through critiquing modernization. Post-­ modernism has also been used to question any form of truth and certainty, particularly regarding hegemonic Western ideologies. Often these dominant ideologies make claims to being objective, uncovering an external truth. However, as we have seen, they are also steeped in political agendas, relationships of power, and oppressive discourses. Therefore, historians documenting the past are not uncovering truths, but subjectively choosing narratives that are bound to their individual and collective ideological presuppositions. For example, when we explore the history of medical treatment, technological advancements, or the education system, we turn to American or European literature for explanations, relegating other communities’ information as inconsequential. Furthermore, this knowledge is often portrayed in colonial languages, excluding those who are not fluent or affluent enough to access it (Trouillot, 1995). Scientific knowledge, and the meta-narratives that explain it, presumes traditional narratives (or local knowledge) as illegitimate. In this respect, knowledge is not simply the truth laid bare but a systematic way of determining how knowledge is created and disseminated in and across societies. Notably, Jean-François Lyotard (year) dissects western knowledge stating, “what is meant by the term knowledge is not only a set of denotative statements, far from it. It also includes notions of “know-how,” “knowing how to live,” “how to listen” … Knowledge, then, is a question of competence

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that goes beyond the simple determination and application of the criterion of truth” (p. 18). Knowledge denotes what we understand as justice, ethics, beauty, and so on and prescribes the criteria used to evaluate the various aspects of our society, although there seems to be a stark difference between what Lyotard describes as traditional and scientific knowledge. Both use the same principles of heroic storytelling to legitimize themselves. These myths, when told over centuries, intertwine with local and state institutions which guide the criteria for the reproduction of its constituency. Later in this chapter we will read an account of Somé and his journey from village to French monastery and then back to village. Somé recounts various forms of knowledge and realities specific to the Dagara tribe in West Africa. These narratives are transmitted from previous ancestors to the current society, often through elders who are charged with interpreting antiquated values for society today. Western society also produces and reproduces values based on information passed down from centuries before. Although these two ways of knowing—traditional and scientific—are perceived as antonymous, European society, similarly, has legitimized itself through the narratives of its ancestors who lived in times that modernists would consider traditional, backward, or undeveloped. Wilfully ignorant of the privileging of this narrative structure, European institutions continue to reproduce societies in its image, determining that anything outside of its scope is not valid knowledge. Lyotard states, “The scientist questions the validity of narrative statements and concludes that they are never subject to argumentation or proof. He classifies them as belonging to a different mentality: savage, primitive, underdeveloped, backward, alienated, composed of opinions, customs, authority, prejudice, ignorance, ideology. Narratives are fables, myths, legends, fit only for women and children. At best, attempts are made to throw some rays of light into this obscurantism, to civilize, educate, develop” (p. 27). This attempt at de-legitimizing traditional knowledges has been the hallmark of colonial rule, a symptom of affliction in the west. Its institutions recount scientific stories that gather consensus from the population, weaving tales about the power and valour of medical developments and instruments of war alike. In this, modern science finds itself in a contradiction as the thing it uses to legitimize itself—narrative knowledge—is the thing that it assails. As a populace is indoctrinated into the scientific mode of reproduction, they form consensus to consume periphery groups who tie their legitimacy to other traditional local knowledges.

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The relationship between power, narratives, history, and ideology is complex. We need a theoretical framework that provides a level of accountability when creating meta-narratives. Although post-modern interventions make spaces for alternative narratives, they have been critiqued as nihilistic, hyper critical, contradictory, and unable to provide a concrete way forward (Maffettone, 2011; Marzagora, 2016; Miller, 2000). Appleby et  al. (year) state that, “postmodernism cannot provide models for the future when it claims to refuse the entire idea of offering models for the future” (p. 237). Post-modernism has provided an initial basis of critique, but eventually falls flat, veering off into chaos, with no tangible solutions once grand narratives are toppled. What do we do now? To address power imbalances in historical accounts and be inclusive of other past realities, historical analysis needs to be based on processes that are critical, practical, and oriented towards social justice. The way forward must address the following questions: How do we protect marginalized groups while acknowledging the relativity of truth? And how can we prevent truth from being co-opted by groups to marginalize others? If all interventions and methods of obtaining knowledge are valid, then which one do we choose?

Re-presentation, Power, and Language Hall (1997) speaks of the complexity of representation as a process of creating meaning through language, signs, and images which are all connected to culture. There are several ways that we can think of representation. For example, representation could be an accurate reflection of reality, providing a meaning specific to the person creating the representation, or it could be constructed through language. Representation is also seen as a way of organizing and classifying complex relationships between things through what Hall calls systems of representation. This system requires two parts, first the process of connecting things to a mental representation and, second, the use of language to convey a message about these things. For example, when we think of an object such as an apple, we use the word “apple” to stand in for—represent—the object we see that grows on a tree. The word itself is not an apple, meaning it cannot grow or be eaten, but there is a mental image that comes to mind when the word is read in printed form. Hall (1997) states, “it [representation] is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people, or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional

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objects, people, and events” (p.  17). Similarly, the words, images, and signs we use to speak about our reality conjure up meanings. Hall contends that when groups of people understand the same language and the meanings behind language, then they belong to the same culture. Hall’s (1997) understanding of representation too is linked to Foucault and Gordon’s (1980) concept of power. Foucault was interested in the processes that perpetuated certain facts over others. He argues certain groups had more power than others. and these groups created discourses that privileged certain facts—for example, history—while excluding others, creating regimes of truth. Foucault speaks to the process of establishing knowledge through analysing institutional processes over individual assertions of truth (e.g. by well-known historians) and studying history. Particularly, understanding who is and is not spoken about gives us clues in determining how truth is constructed. Foucault observed that because of an imbalance of power, there has been much written to analyse and deconstruct certain groups who are marginalized women, the poor, and racialized groups. However, the groups who are producing this knowledge are rarely analysed and discussed in relation to their discursive power. Foucault (2012) states, “Power is tolerable only on condition that it masks a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms” (p. 86). In other words, much has been written regarding the local languages, cultures, and societal structures of Indigenous peoples, even to the extent of creating museums to fetishize Indigenous artefacts. However, where are the museums that document current Western life and technology? Similarly, much has been written about people experiencing poverty and homelessness; however, Foucault would argue less is written about the privileged bourgeoise.

Knowledge Production Whose knowledges matters and whose knowledges are the basis of inquiry into our reality?

Foucault speaks to knowledge developing through a “will know,” a hunger for knowledge that comes in the form of classification and hierarchies of information. Suspicious of information that often perpetuated the interests of Western society, Foucault argued that although this information appeared neutral, it worked to exclude the information of the people

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it classified. For example, during the colonization of Africa, colonizers excluded African ways of knowing, replacing these with European knowledge. In this way, Western powers produced truths about African communities that reflected European values, often representing African populations as uncivilized and inferior as a way of exerting dominance. Some African people have also viewed themselves through this narrative as backward and uncultured (Fanon, 1967). The production of knowledge involves one’s subject position, which includes their political affiliations, social class, gender, race, and other markers of identity (Akena, 2012). To understand how knowledge has been produced about the world and who it empowers—or disempowers— we need to be critical of who produces knowledge and how this knowledge fits into our material and colonial context. Local Indigenous knowledges are largely based on a connection to the land and resistance towards dominant colonial knowledges, which pose as a threat to Indigenous way of knowing. Knowledge creation is purposeful and fulfils the needs of the society it embodies. For example, currently in the Covid-19 pandemic, knowledge is created to determine how society should be structured to prevent social harm. Likewise, in the civil rights movement, the eugenics movement, and ongoing production of colonization, knowledge is created and transformed to legitimize a group’s stance on social issues of political and social importance. Akena (2012) observes, “knowledge production is a function of social processes and structures, on one hand, and the pattern of intellectual life, including the modes of knowing, to respond to challenges of the community” (p. 602). The task of creating knowledge to resist legacies of colonial subjugation also needs to be produced through a group with shared interests in anti-colonial and Indigenous epistemology. These groups, however, need to be vigilant regarding the prevalence of colonial knowledge as this knowledge permeates all groups on some level, not just through those who perpetuate the status quo. Additionally, Indigenous history may also be scarce among Indigenous communities due to the acceptance of dominant narratives. Thio’ngo (1986) extends Hall (1997), Foucault (2012), and Akena’s (2012) concepts to include knowledge production through language in the colonial context. He speaks of his experience in Africa with traditional imperialist and resistance frameworks. A form of imperialism that has been devastating is what Thio’ngo terms the “cultural bomb”—the eradication of Indigenous local knowledges, beliefs, languages, and heritages

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(Wa Thiong’o, 1986). This is done through a predatory system of political, social, cultural, and economic domination and misrepresentation. The result is an amnesia among Africans and the diaspora, leading them to focus on imperial and colonial knowledges psychologically detaching themselves (or Siè) from their local communities. This separation creates a toxic relationship between one’s local community, imperial powers, and colonial regimes. For example, enslaved Indigenous Africans who were brought to North American Indigenous territories were taught to align with the imperial powers with little consideration for the Indigenous communities. This division between the African and First Nations communities has led to the dilution of power for both groups, effectively disarming their efforts for change (Smith, 1999). Language has the power to unite and divide us. It is also central to representation and how communities or individuals define themselves. Thio’ngo (1986) speaks about the power of language and how it works as a form of misrepresentation in colonial and neo-colonial projects. The English, French, and Portuguese languages were used to replace the local language of colonized Africans. Thio’ngo explains, languages were forcefully imposed on colonized Africans and adopted by others as the language of progress, to the point that Indigenous languages were seen as illegitimate. He states, “the possibility of using mother-tongues provokes a tone of levity in phrases like ‘a dreadful betrayal’ and ‘a guilty feeling’; but that of foreign languages produces a categorical positive embrace” (p. 7). Colonial languages were woven into processes of knowledge production to delegitimize local peoples, cultures, and ways of knowing. Language goes beyond just conveying meaning; it works to construct entire cultures and ways of interacting with the world (physically and psychologically). Language sets the terms of interaction between people, their environment, and each other. It can be written or spoken and contains nuances that other languages may not. Knowledge is also developed and disseminated through language. Thio’ngo (1986) states: In doing similar kinds of things and actions repeatedly under similar circumstances, similar even in their mutability, certain patterns, moves, rhythms, habits, attitudes, experiences, and knowledge emerge. Those experiences are handed over to the next generation and become the inherited basis for further actions on nature and on themselves. There is a gradual accumulation of values which in time become almost self-evident truths governing their conception of what is right and wrong, good bad, beautiful, and ugly, courageous, and cowardly, generous, and mean in their internal and external relations. (p. 14)

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Language conveys these messages and communicates the boundaries of culture as a collective memory and historical record. The representations that language conveys tell us who we are and how to think about ourselves and the communities or individuals around us. With the expansion of colonialism, local representations of self, community, and environment were disrupted. Similarly, in the Canadian context, the 1960s’ scoop and residential schools were created to perpetrate genocide against Indigenous communities. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families as a way of violent assimilation into Canadian culture. Many Indigenous children were abused, murdered, put into mass graves, and traumatized, leaving wounds that remain unhealed. Referring to Indigenous sites of genocide as “residential schools” is problematic. To me, the term residential represents an individual or family dwelling, and the term school represents a place children and adults learn and develop. Both representations appear prima facie as neutral and perhaps positive. However, this is misleading and has arguably been represented in this fashion to minimize Indigenous suffering and the implications of the Canadian state in nation-wide genocide. A more accurate representation would be a torture camp run by state-appointed terrorists. Thio’ngo (1986) recalls that in Kenya, schooling comprised humiliating and physically punishing students who did not speak English, going as far as to have students investigate their peers by telling authorities who did not comply. This elucidates how language is used as a tool of division to devalue local languages, substituting European language as the dominant ideal. With this substitution comes a loss of local meanings and histories, leading one—as Fanon (1967) explains—to question their humanity. This cumulates into a quest for recognition, a search for what was lost.

Decolonization Stereotypes of Indigenous peoples are challenged through incorporating images and portrayals of Indigenous peoples who belong and contribute to sophisticated and complex societies. (Iseke-Barnes, 2005, p. 161)

Colonialism still fragments Indigenous experiences, causing pain and destruction. It is also constantly reforming itself and “others” to maintain its legitimacy. Reclaiming history is not only an act of justice but also an assertion of power. To resist and challenge colonialism, Indigenous people have needed to retell their stories and recreate shared language for

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speaking about history, sociology, psychology, and the politics of colonialism. Indigenous histories represent contact with European colonizers as parasitic. Colonizers brought predatory individualism, capitalism, disease, and death. This contrasts with colonial history, which represents itself as the pinnacle of enlightenment, progress, and civility. Smith (1999) argues that decolonization brings us closer to knowing ourselves by re-centring Indigenous knowledges. They speak to two ways forward: focusing on the time before colonization to find the authentic community and focusing on having an analysis of how Indigenous communities have been colonized. Decolonization sets out to change the world order and disrupt colonial power dynamics through re-centring knowledge that was in place before the fragmentation of colonization. However, a challenge remains: how does a community reclaim its pre-colonial history? Can Indigenous communities rebuild themselves? Or is the challenge to create an alternative history based on current circumstances? Writing is also important to decolonization, re-presenting history in a fragmented world and theorizing the development of history. However, there is a danger of Indigenous communities being misappropriated through writing, which may contribute to hostile views of Indigenous people if we are not critical of language. Writing needs to be decolonized through relocating the centre from imperial powers to recreate history. Contested histories are within the fabric of Indigenous genealogies, landscape, and cultures. Smith (1999) contends that Indigenous people should not reject writing, theory, and research. These tools will not go away. The struggle is to make sense of the Indigenous world while trying to transform what counts as important to the powerful. This, however, poses a potential problem: How can (or should) we use colonial languages— English, French, etc.—to decolonize? Is it possible for Indigenous communities to be fully emancipated through the English language? What role should language play, and should it matter if those who need to read it cannot?

Somé and Fanon in Dialogue: What Has Been Neglected? I am a man of two worlds, trying to be at home in both of them—a difficult task at best. (Somé, 1994, p. 3)

Somé (1994), in his text Of Water and the Spirit, tells his story from a West African Indigenous perspective through his journey into colonial

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acculturation and back to his Indigenous roots. He speaks of the West being consumed with sickness, becoming as endangered as the Indigenous peoples it colonizes. The diagnosis is a neglect of alternative realities, spirituality, and its ancestral past of violence (against people and the environment) in the struggle for progress. He contends that the West has become a spiritual wasteland. The effects being seen in urban violence, poverty, crime, unemployment, and a growing intolerance towards others. The disease of colonialism has endangered Indigenous communities, while governments around the world are fighting over how Indigenous communities should be preserved. Often, this preservation is done through Western mechanisms that have a stake in creating the “problem” they are trying to resolve. Wane (2006) expresses that, in the field of education, this rush to save Indigenous communities—to do something—has made “the business of education and knowledge production contested terrain” (Wane, 2006, p. 87). If the assault against Indigenous life and knowledge becomes successful, Somé argues, all people will be subject to a “hard trip into the future in search of the values of the past” (p. 9). Indigenous knowledge, woven deeply with spirituality, is where some have sought guidance and answers to current problems. Often seen as superstitious and backward, to Somé, the medicine bag and talismans are key ingredients for decolonization, symbolizing an antidote to Western dialectic of domination. Western society in its crusade for progress has far left the spiritual behind. Somé explains that to embrace Eurocentricity is to abandon one’s local knowledge (Somé, 1994, p. 54). Those who meet Western values face the danger of forgetfulness, a collective amnesia that can only see forward. The process of alienation is a side effect of the colonial disease. The disconnection that takes place ruptures the soul, disassociating one’s consciousness from multifaceted realities. The struggle to understand Indigenous ways of knowing is tied to the struggle to accept lived realities that give life to other cultures. Alienation also leads us to distance ourselves from our local community and environment. Somé (1994) states, “Alienation is one of the many faces of modernity (a feature of modern society). The cure is communication and community—a new sense of togetherness” (p. 13). He also states that, “a person who stays away from his home for a lengthy period leaves a great portion of his soul abroad when he returns. Nothing important can happen until the person is fully integrated again, that is, joined back together, body and soul” (p. 163). Celebrating, grieving, growing, and sharing in life’s triumphs is the

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richness of Indigenous communion. Caring for the land, learning from it, and resisting the exploitation of its resources allow for the continuation of the earth and communities for generations. The individual who is estranged from their community becomes deprived of authentic encounters. Fanon (1967), similarly, speaks of the term alienation to mean the estrangement of one’s consciousness from their local surroundings and, in most cases, fosters a hostility towards this environment. The colonized subject develops a zealousness to undermine their local knowledge and replace it with the knowledge of the metropole, spreading its disease. Language is the tool of transmission, which bears with it the weight of civilizations. This is seen in Somé’s difficulty of translating his Indigenous reality into Western thought. He states: One of my greatest problems was that the things I talk about here did not happen in English; they happened in a language that has a very different mindset about reality. There is usually a significant violence done to anything being translated from one culture to another. Modern American English, which seems to me better suited for quick fixes and the thrill of a consumer culture, seems to falter when asked to communicate another person’s world view. (Somé, 1994, p. 2)

Words cannot be decoded equitably; meaning and historical context resist being restored to a natural equipoise. Fanon, speaking to the politics of language, states that as language is taught, one subsumes themselves to the norms and practices of that cultural group. Then, when one learns the language of the colonizer, they assimilate into the culture and values of the colonizer, which often alienates oneself from their community consciousness. The subject must suffer through this imbalance, often trying to pick a side depending on how they wish to be recognized. Du Bois (1968) speaks to both Somé and Fanon’s frustrations through his theory of double consciousness, where African Americans are born within a veil, living within a reality, but living outside of it at the same time. Constantly looking at themselves through the eyes of others who are looking back at them with contempt and pity—two warring ideals struggling for self-­ consciousness and self-emancipation. Language, the living representation of a community’s consciousness, becomes implanted with biases and hierarchies of superiority as a way of restructuring the reality of the knower. However, when Fanon’s colonial subject finds themselves in European spaces, an enchantment is observed

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taking the form of a splinter in the psyche, widening the chasm between both worlds. Fanon speaks to the “spell cast on from a far” on the body that witnesses the metropole, creating an “aura of magic around him” (Fanon, 1967, p.  7). This spell casts itself through the medium of language, slowly turning local languages and histories into a Spector of the past, soon forgotten as its ancestors have been. This leads to the subject being stripped of their humanity, having, “no culture, no civilization, and no long historical past” (Fanon, 1967, p. 17). Next is the betrayal of language, foreshadowed by the desideratum of recognition by the other. As one comes closer to the metropole, one exchanges—often violently—their local tongue, hoping to reconstruct their humanity. Fanon states, “in the French Antilles the bourgeoisie does not use creole, except when speaking to servants. At school the young Martinican is taught to treat the dialect with contempt” (Fanon, 1967, p. 4). Local languages are treated as inferior, only to be spoken to and by people stamped as inferior. To be recognized, to be whole, and to rid oneself of this sickness means to have a language that embodies indigeneity, surpassing the European gaze to widen our view. To create and dictate one’s past, present, and future is a decolonial and self-emancipating act. Somé, contending with the decolonization question, discusses how he continually finds his way amidst both internal and external fragmentation. Somé’s (1994) journey takes him to a monastery, where he spends several years re-orienting himself to Euro-Christian values. Upon his physical return to his local community, the Dagara recognize a spiritual shift in Somé, a change in his language, and a rejection of local knowledge, which pose a danger to their way of life. Somé’s body, fragmented, a husk of his former self, struggles with the absurdity of village life. He had lost his Siè—a separation of soul from body. Struggling with inner turmoil, he becomes angry at his family, seeing the community as inferior to himself. He states, “I knew what it meant when the Siè is out of a person. That person is prone to unnecessary pride and passion, loses his humility, and can’t tolerate feeling vulnerable” (Somé, 1994, p. 223). The elders investigating the matter provide an analysis. Speaking to the predatory nature of European supremacy, they exclaim, “you cannot live here as you are now without turning this place into what you are. This is what the White man did throughout the land of the Black man. He could not be here without subverting our home to fit his needs” (p. 176). Somé recalls, he

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“had acquired something different and infinitely more dangerous: literacy. As an educated man I had returned, not as a villager who had worked for the white man, but as a white man” (p. 167). Somé, in his return, embodies Fanon’s collective unconsciousness, where the colonial subject sees his (former) self and community as the representation of backwardness, wretchedness, and evil, betraying themselves—losing their soul. The elders ruminate on this danger, eventually convinced of the need for a psycho-spiritual intervention. An intervention that makes a lasting excision into Somé’s psyche and soul, removing the infection and starting the process of decolonization—the process being complete through a spiritual initiation. To Fanon, there is a spiritual aspect to the liberation of the colonized through similar psycho-spiritual interventions. We must be able to transcend beyond the world that has been crafted for us. He states, “Man is not only the potential for self-­consciousness or negation. If it be true that consciousness is transcendental, we must also realize that this transcendence is obsessed with the issue of love and understanding. Man is a ‘yes’ resonating from cosmic harmonies” (Fanon, 1967, p. xii). Not only must the subject rise above the veil, but they must be able to find themselves in harmony with the universe, reaching beyond themselves to remember their humanity. Fighting for recognition or assimilating into European culture leads to further bondage, not liberation. Somé speaks of the West’s disconnection from its past, and particularly its ancestry, which has led to unrest. Western society is living in a culture where there is a great ignorance towards their ancestors who, in the name of progress, killed, enslaved, and devastated other local communities and cultures. Colonialism and its religion have been responsible for the disruption of tribal knowledge. The past must be accounted for to bring healing and change into the future. Somé recalls studying African history while in the monastery. However, history was only expressed in the context of European involvement, as if the world was only influenced by White Europeans. There were some European ancestors and elders who are celebrated with national holidays and anthems of historical discovery and conquest. Yet Indigenous ancestors were labelled as pagan scrubbed from the periphery of history. Somé is left to ponder who his ancestors were and why the ones he is taught about do not look like him or carry his community values. As Somé (1994) investigates, he finds there are elements of the European way of life that are not congruent with his own. Particularly, a culture where the old are made to feel useless and the young wander to find purpose. He states, “elders and mentors have an irreplaceable

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function in the life of any community. Without them, the young are lost … the old must live in the young like a grounding force that tames the tendency toward bold but senseless actions and shows them the path of wisdom. In the absence of elders, the impetuosity of youth becomes the slow death of the community” (Somé, 1994, p. 310). The absence of this cultural value is a sign of the impending death of the soul and of the culture, according to Somé. The relationship between young and old needs to be mended for both to live in harmony, connected to themselves and community. Both are disempowered without the other. Somé begins to weave together a Dagara decolonial epistemology that is at odds with colonial ideals of separating nature and our material existence from the spiritual world. This epistemology resists the constant need to categorize, discover, dissect, exploit, and illuminate. Knowledge of Indigenous technology converges with the need for secrecy, an element required to sustain the community. As more people speak about Indigenous methods and medicine, the potency is diminished. Somé states, “to the Dagara, the esoteric is a technology that is surrounded by secrecy. Those who know about it can own it only if they don’t disclose it, for disclosure takes the power away” (Somé, 1994, p. 60). This creates a conundrum for Western epistemology, which is rooted in knowing, questioning, providing evidence, and exhibiting its discoveries. Also, at first glance, there presents a paradox in Indigenous living. How can a society that champions communal living continue to survive by shrouding its technology in secrecy? Somé contends that silence contains its own meaning, liberated from the politics of language. Feeling conveys meaning through the medium of the body, shaping the world in a way diction cannot. Somé explains that The speech of silence is achieved when words, and their potential ability to hurt meaning, are done away with. Words entrap meaning, torture it, slice it into pieces the way a butcher cuts meat of a slaughtered animal and serves it to us. The speech of silence has profound respect for the integrity of meaning as an entity separate from language. In silence, meaning is no longer heard, but felt; and feeling is the best hearing, the best instrument for recording meaning. Meaning is made welcome as it is and treated with respect. (Somé, 1994, p. 272)

Members who practise in private are chosen and supported by the greater community to do their work. When this communal support system becomes disjointed with the land and spirit (which, at times, it may), the

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technology becomes dangerous, and the practitioner risks endangering themselves and the community. Harmony between nature and the spiritual world is paramount. As thought interacts with the material and spiritual, meaning is created, and reality becomes a vast arena encompassing the imagination and other planes of existence. Somé (1994) states, “The Dagara view of reality is large, if one can imagine something, then it has at least the potential to exist.” This is juxtaposed with how spirituality has been used in the colonial context as a driving force to subjugate bodies, severing them from their local communities. Somé ties together his methods of decolonization through the Yielbongura, meaning the thing that knowledge cannot eat. The notion of Yielbongura speaks to the mending of spiritual and material life, and the healing that takes place.

Conclusion The relationship between knowledge, history, representation, and language is a complex one. When intertwined with power, they create a system that has disenfranchised Indigenous claims to truth and reality. As colonialism expanded, the production of knowledge was used to demark colonial subjects as illegitimate knowledge bearers. This has caused a ripple effect, disrupting the spiritual, physical, and psychological elements of Indigenous beings. Seeking answers, Indigenous and marginalized people have turned to the past to understand the present and plot a track into the future. But recollecting the past has become toilsome because of its fragmentation. Doing so requires guidance. Somé’s story is one example of how we can grapple with decolonization and the challenges it poses to our present and future. Through his journey, Somé seeks harmony between both worlds, which seems incompatible. He does this through rooting himself in his history, fostering connection with his local community, expanding his view of reality, and embracing spirituality to heal the individual and collective Siè. As we engage in the project of decolonization, we must consider why we are searching for answers and what is missing. New possibilities emerge as we re-centre ourselves, realities, and ways of living.

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References Akena, F. A. (2012). Critical analysis of the production of Western knowledge and its implications for Indigenous knowledge and decolonization. Journal of Black Studies, 43(6), 599–619. Brady, J. (2017). Education for whom? Exploring systems of oppression and domination. Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education, 8(1), 116–126. Chakrabarty, D. (1992). Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: Who speaks for “Indian” pasts? Representations, 37, 1–26. Du Bois, W.  E. B. (1968). The souls of black folk; essays and sketches. Johnson Reprint Corp. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (C.  L. Markmann, Trans.). Grove Weidenfeld. Foucault, M., & Gordon, C. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon Books. Foucault, M., Gordon, C., Patton, P., & Beaulieu, A. (2012). Considerations on marxism, phenomenology and power. Interview with Michel Foucault; recorded on April 3rd, 1978. Foucault Studies, 98–114. Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices (S. Hall, Ed.). Sage Publication. Iseke-Barnes, J. (2005). Misrepresentations of Indigenous history and science. Public broadcasting, the Internet, and education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(2), 149–165. Jenkins, K. (1999). Re-thinking history (Routledge Classics). Routledge. Maffettone, S. (2011). How to avoid the liaison dangereuse between post-­ colonialism and postmodernism. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 37(4), 493–504. Marzagora, S. (2016). The humanism of reconstruction: African intellectuals, decolonial critical theory and the opposition to the ‘posts’ (postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism). Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(2), 161–178. McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge. Miller, L. J. (2000). The poverty of truth-seeking: Postmodernism, discourse analysis, and critical feminism. Theory & Psychology, 10(3), 313–352. Pateman, C., & Mills, C. W. (2007). Contract and domination. Polity Press. Pratt, M. L. (2008). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (2nd ed.). Routledge. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books. Savo, H. (2018). Decolonizing knowledge in South Africa: Dismantling the ‘pedagogy of big lies’. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 40(2), 48–65. Smith, L. (1999). Imperialism, history, writing and theory. In Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Otago University Press.

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Somé, M. (1994). Of water and the spirit: Ritual, magic, and initiation in the life of an African shaman. Putnam Book. Thio’ngo, N. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. James Currey. Trouillot, M.-R. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Beacon Press. Wa Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the mind. Diogenes, 46(184), 101–104. Wane, N. (2006). Is decolonization possible? In G. J. S. Dei & A. Kempf (Eds.), Anti-colonialism and education: The politics of resistance (pp.  87–106). Sense Publishers.

CHAPTER 8

Seeking the African Indigenous Ways of Being in Academia: The Intersecting Journeys of Two Black Women from Different Historical Colonial Experiences—Part One Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh and Betty Walters

Introduction What do we mean by Indigenous? Who do we refer to when we say Indigenous? These are questions that were presented to me recently by an African, born and educated in Africa, and living within the modern

O. O. Upiomoh (*) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] B. Walters Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Department of Management, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_8

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context of being, here in Canada. I thought to use these questions as a humble entry point to this topic. Without a clear comprehension of what we mean or who we refer to when we say Indigenous, there is precise knowledge that is known for certain based on our collective lived realities. We know confidently that Indigenous cultures have an age-old history of producing high-quality individuals, strong families, and tight-knit communities, while the modern system was created based on usurping and destroying Indigenous cultures, presenting lies, death, and destruction to the world (Meniooh, 2010). Oxford Dictionary (2020) defines Indigenous as a native originating or occurring naturally in a place. On the other hand, Collins Dictionary (2020) describes Indigenous people or things as such belonging to the country in which they are found, rather than coming there or being brought there from another country. WHO (2020) identifies Indigenous people as: Communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group, descended from groups present in the area before modern states were created and current borders defined. They generally maintain cultural and social identities, and social, economic, cultural, and political institutions, separate from the mainstream or dominant society or culture.

The above description by WHO (2020) implies that the Indigenous person do view themselves as having a historical existence and identity that is separate and independent of colonial borders, states, and culture now enveloping them (Lapland, 2020). According to the United Nations (UN), they practice their unique traditions and retain their social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant society’s culture, which they live in (UN, 2020). The United Nations further described Indigenous people as descendants of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement, or other means (UN, 2020). To give a modern understanding of the concept of Indigenous, the UN (2020) has adopted the following identifying measures: • Self-identification as Indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member.

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• Historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies. • Strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources. • Distinct social, economic, or political systems. • Distinct language, culture, and beliefs. • Form non-dominant groups of society. • Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities (UN, 2020). Based on the above identifying criteria, if we are the holder of unique languages, knowledge systems, and beliefs and possess invaluable knowledge of practices for the sustainable management of our natural resources, have a special relation to and use of our traditional lands, and our ancestral land has a fundamental importance for our collective physical and cultural survival as peoples, we are an Indigenous person (UN, 2020). In this context, this includes the brothers and sisters of Africa both in the continent and outside of it. As Indigenous peoples, we hold our own diverse concepts of development, which is based on our traditional values, visions, needs, and priorities (UN, 2020). Hence, our African Indigenous ways of being (knowing and living) is within our African culture and traditional values, informed to our daily lives through our spiritual system, social system, economic system, educational system, and governance (Morodenibig, 2011). It is our Indigenous cultures that tells us who we are, where we are from, where we are going to, how we got here, our purpose here, and how we must live and protect ourselves. Our African Indigenous ways of being are built on harmonious balance with nature and the principles of preservation of life (Shenmira, 2013). To achieve, live, and re-live these Indigenous ways, our learning must be what is natural to learning—learning is perceived as culturally specific and how people learn is also culturally specific (Kaya, 2015). Hence, African Indigenous Knowledge is the natural way with which an African child, youth, or persons should learn.

Conceptual Framework: African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) This chapter is informed by African Indigenous knowledge (AIK). Through the lens of African Indigenous knowledge, the underlying objective of which, according to Hilliard-III (1986, 2000), Jhutyms (2016, 2017), Obenga (1992, 1995), and Nantambu (2001), is to gain

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self-­mastery, we will focalize the significance of our journey in the quest to know ourselves within our cultural and ancestral jurisdiction (Oshobugie, 2019) and to bridge back to our ancestral knowledge (Shenmira, 2013). This concept of self-knowledge and self-mastering which is key for AIK has obviously been a failure of the modern (Eurasian) systems. We see this failure in Stewart’s (2017) editorial when he states that the understanding of identity formation is one of the primary purposes of formal education, especially schooling. He was referring to the modern educational systems. In consideration of this, it is certain that most of us who have gone through the modern educational system, imposed by the Eurasians, still, in our forties, and with one or more PhD degrees, still wonder about who we are and why we are here. This sense of wondering speaks clearly to identity lost or identity that was never gained even at the end of one’s adulthood (Oshobugie, 2019). There is a reason for this, which is expressed below. According to Owusu-Ansah and Mji (2013), “knowledge or science, and its methods of investigation, cannot be divorced from a people’s history, cultural context and worldview” (p. 1), while for Sarpong (2002), it is this worldview that shapes consciousness and forms the theoretical framework within which knowledge is sought, critiqued, and/or understood. Understanding that each culture has a worldview, we also understand that it is dangerous and oppressive, to hail any one method of investigation and knowledge as universal (Asante, 1987). However, this Eurasian method or modern method of investigation and knowledge systems has been imposed upon us, African people, for so long, forcing us to see our world and their world through their lens. We have been educated by them and for them to fit into the goals of modern societies where Black bodies must always be slaves and their new roles will be defined and refined with every societal change (Carruthers, 1999). The Mohonk conferences of 1890 was set to do just this. Carruthers (1999) reasserted a statement by one of the so-called abolitionists, Reverend James Pike, who was part of the conference. His report of this incident reveals Pike’s sentiments and the sentiments of other Whites to indicate that the problem of Blacks (referred to as Negro at the time) “was not how to teach them reading and writing, indeed they learn that all too readily. Rather, the problem … was how to teach the Negro proper manners and respect for his new role as a worker” (Carruthers, 1999, p. 256). Mucina (2011a) clearly articulated the goal of the Eurasian colonial culture and education, which is to inflict spiritual and mental injury upon African/Black people through imposing its alien systems while

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systematically attempting to annihilate and extinguish any traces of Indigenous education, knowledge, and collective ancestral memory. So, as stated above, the sense of a forgotten identity or complete loss of identity is the actual and primary goal of the modern colonial White supremacist educational system. Using a rather psychological approach, Nandy (2009) diagnosed the presence of a blurred self-definition (confused self-identity) as the main symptom and danger in the experience of colonialism, its culture, and knowledge systems. Morodenibig (2011) articulated this all too well in the quote below: When any church sends missionaries worldwide, its leaders know the dilemmas in which they are putting other people. Most missionaries think they are so right that they are willing to sacrifice themselves to accelerate the process of destruction of other cultures. You are called barbaric if you reject them, and your identity dies if you accept them. This is what is waiting for the world, even on the individual level: barbarism and anti-culturalism which started 2000 years ago. (p. 102)

This death of one’s identity expressed in the above quote is understood as the primary goal of the modern Eurasian world fostered by its educational system. The elders in our temples, among many stories we are taught, expressed that for this loss of identity to be successful and maintained, Christianity, at its birth, along with its religion’s leaders decided to wipe out all pre-existing knowledge. Modern Science also eagerly lent its support to the new idea that the world, meaning the human species, is only 6600 years old (Morodenibig, 2011). So, one grows up in a society where its view of it is altered from inception, hence a completely blurred, lost, and forgotten identity. As a result, the word identity crisis, which within our African Indigenous context, never existed, has now become a problem big enough to be studied and researched. African Indigenous knowledge as a theoretical framework becomes a means by which we could heal and recover from this trauma. AIK recognizes that “A person has no other identity than his or her history and culture and cannot develop harmoniously if he/she does not choose to build their own destiny based on their own civilizational values” (Wasseker, 2019, p. 6). Consequently, here in this chapter, we work by drawing on our own African Indigenous knowledge, culture, and civilization to arrive at answers in the best way that we can: to the identity questions posed through the story shared by Betty in this chapter. It is important to note

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that since the modern colonial educational system has produced these identity losses in many of us, we cannot truly say that we are educated. Mazama (2016) strongly asserts, “for you to be truly educated, you must know about yourself.” This hard but humbling realization may be the place to begin in seeking healing within one’s Indigenous context. It means that we realize that we have lost our way. And like good children, we are stopping to ask for directions about our way home, back to our ancestral embrace. The framework of AIK clears a path that leads us to our ancestral home in body, mind, and spirit. For, if it is true that everyone has a home, then, everyone must go back home some day or, at least, try (MeritahWisdom, 2021; Shenmira, 2016a). Therefore, the relevance of finding our African roots, and practicing our African culture, becomes pertinent in this process. It informs a decolonizing behavior and research praxis. For like an orphan child, detached from family roots and ties, the trauma of being lost, feeling lost, and alone, only leaves us to seek allegiance from that which at the same time defiles us. Everyone needs to know who they are, where they are coming from, where they are going, and the reason why (Shenmira, 2016). This reconquest of the self (Shenmira, 2016) results in self-mastering, which is the goal of African Indigenous Education (Hilliard-III, 1986, 2000; Jhutyms, 2016, 2017; Obenga, 1992, 1995; Nantambu, 2001). Thus, African Indigenous knowledge covers all facets of astronomy, Kemetic (Ancient Egyptian) science, philosophy, spirituality, and geomancy, providing the most valuable tool for individuals that are seeking a spiritual evolution (Maakmaah, 2016).

Interruption of Indigenous Ways of Knowing Through Slavery and Colonization The experts cannot agree on how many Africans were sold into slavery, but many of them agree with Angeles (2013), who states that “it is estimated that about 12.5 million Africans were embarked as slaves towards the Americas between the turn of the 16th century and 1866” (p.  2). There are many negative depictions of Africans suggesting that they were savages and unproductive. However, others like Roy (2002, as cited in Guess, 2006) presented a more realistic view of Africans by articulating that “they were civilized and relatively docile, they were knowledgeable about tropical agriculture, they were skilled iron workers, they had

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immunities to Old World diseases, thus making them a more secure investment for a slave owner” (p. 665). Also, it is almost impossible for anyone to accurately write on how slavery and colonization interrupted African Indigenous ways because most articles about that period were written through the eyes of White colonizers or explorers. Ebron (2009) explained why written documents do not capture the whole way of life of the enslaved Africans: There are documents about them, but they do not reflect the perspectives of the enslaved, and the written documents often obscure and erase the very things that may have been most important in their lives—their relationships, their skills, their forms of knowledge, their hopes, and dreams. Under slave society, slaveholders wrote enslaved Africans out of history, inscribing the emerging contributions of varied American regions into the archives as if Africans were virtually absent. (Para. 4)

Therefore, it is an established fact that Africans before captivity were knowledgeable, productive people who had sophisticated methods of governance and educational systems. Meaning that being sold into slavery was not only demeaning but interrupted their lifestyle and their capabilities to enhance their lives as free agents. Furthermore, many scholars wrote the truth about Africa before the Europeans inserted themselves into the continent. One of them is Smart (2019), who described Africa to be “a civilized continent with a system of theology, education, social, cultural and political organisation” (p.  19). Also renowned historian Davidson (2014) in his documentary on Caravans of Gold provided factual evidence that Kilwa was the biggest trading center in the world trading with India and China; and Mali was extremely wealthy and refined in culture, education, and an extremely successful trading post. No words can truly describe the dehumanizing effects of slavery. According to Wane, Torres, and Nyaga (2017), “Colonialism affected all aspects of Indigenous peoples’ lives—spiritually, socially, culturally, and politically” (p. 297). African Indigenous spirituality was deeply entrenched in the enslaved, but the Europeans due to the lack of understanding African ways attributed their traditions and rituals to witchcraft or magic. Wane, Torres, and Nyaga (2017) clarifies this perception that “Religion being a scientific measure of spirituality identifies Indigenous spiritualties as dangerous and in need of regulation” (p.  296). Wallace (2015) adds to this discourse

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explaining that because Africans were considered “primitives,” their practices were regarded as performances of heretics and witches, and although mainstream Christian beliefs included magic practices, there was a moral distinction between what was considered religion and what was considered magic. These types of perceptions perpetuated the colonial construction of African religions identities, which is still prevalent today. In so doing they demeaned one of the most cherished and sacred ancestral ways of Africans. The enslaved were encouraged to convert because of the European influence and their negative constructions of African religion. Wallace (2015) postulates that “Africans who became members of these churches were primarily in a labour relationship with settlers who required their renunciation of traditional practices” (p.  30). The article below reveals the intermingling of African Indigenous spirituality with Christianity. An article on the “Slavery and Remembrance” website theorized that “some enslaved people converted to Christianity while others rejected it as the religion of their oppressors. In some cases, enslaved people continued to use elements of African music in their religious expressions, including syncopation, polyrhythms, and call-and-response.” The attack on African spirituality had some measure of success, but evidently, aspects of African spirituality survived throughout the centuries. Another method of interruption used by the colonizers was one of social alienation and cultural oppression. It is apparent that slavery and colonization created an institution of racism by establishing relationships of power, that of master and slave. There were distinctive boundaries physically and verbally. The enslaved lived a great distance from the colonizer’s house, and the physical space of the colonizer and the colonized was vastly different in comfort and design. The plantation social structure was not conducive to building relationships between master and slave and restricted social interactions among slaves from different plantations. Handler (2000) points out that the plantation slavery environment in Barbados produced alienation from the White slave masters, which not only strengthened their mistrust of Whites but solidified the African pattern of secrecy among the slaves. I believe that this pattern has permeated down for many generations throughout history and is very prevalent today in African/Black communities. African Indigenous ways of living is founded on communal gatherings and palavering; therefore, this social distancing created a barrier from them recreating this environment in the new world.

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It shattered their traditional way of survival and created an indistinguishable void in their lives. Another area that was prohibited by law was that of speaking in the African native tongues, and this further caused the disremembering of the enslaved own native languages. This was yet another form of disrupting the enslaved normal way of life. It confirms that there were many areas whereby the Whites maintained the subjugation of the enslaved. Lake (1995) points out the Europeans’ dual mode of operation was physical exploitation in conjunction with a system of cultural oppression by them making sure everything African was labeled inferior and everything European was labeled superior. This language law was enforced to maintain White supremacy and as an attempt to minimize the linguistic barriers between colonizers and the colonized. According to an article on the Slavery and Remembrance website: Europeans created laws in the Americas to prohibit large numbers of enslaved people from gathering on their own time for funerals or other events. They also feared other features of African expression, such as drumming and calls on conch shells. Despite attempts to eliminate communication, enslaved communities throughout the Americas found means to communicate through song and music by using hidden codes in the words or meanings of their songs.

We propose that the enforcement of such laws against Blacks during slavery and colonialism kept the African Diaspora from advancement and began the process of colonizing the memory of the enslaved. Handler (2000) described how the medical treatment of the enslaved fell into two overlapping categories: one provided by slave self-help communities and the other by White management. He further explained that management’s care was mainly done to secure future economic gains by ensuring the slaves remained healthy laborers. He also surmised that unfortunately “Whites generally showed little interest in the lame, elderly, or otherwise incapacitated, although these attitudes varied among individual slave masters and by time” (p. 58). Handler (2000) further explained that “from around the 1650s to the early to mid 1700s, when whites viewed slaves more as expendable commodities and the costs of purchasing them were relatively low, slave- masters made few allowances for slave medical care” (p. 58), and as a result the enslaved instituted their own recollections of African Indigenous remedies

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for diseases and sicknesses. The Europeans attributed witchcraft to the medical practice of the enslaved. Handler (2000) emphasized that many reports from Whites in “the early 19th century, linked many slaves’ deaths and injuries to sorcery/witchcraft,” and they continue to spread negative narratives about “slave belief and medical system” (p. 61). In fact, many scholars have implied that the herbal and plant knowledge of the African slaves came from the then-free Africans studying medicine as apprentices or that they learned it naturally. Handler wrote about the different titles that were given to any slaves who possess healing knowledge or qualities. However, he did explain that “There is no information on how people became Obeah practitioners, “Negro doctors”, or other types of healers, or how such people learned or developed their skills, and whether some type of apprenticeship system, however informal, existed” (p.  68). This medical ability of the enslaved mystified the Europeans, and it provokes discussion about the apparent advancement of the enslaved before they were captured and how that knowledge remained intact to be utilized in the colonies. In our opinion, the greatest disruption was that of the family unit. The enslaved were treated like property, which could be traded. In selling off members of the same family to various locations meant that the plantation system purposely created dysfunctional family units within the enslaved communities. Attached to the family unit is one’s identity, and without knowing one’s identity, one can experience a deep sense of loss. Williams (2020) described the harshness of the situation: Slavery not only inhibited family formation but made stable, secure family life difficult if not impossible. Enslaved people could not legally marry in any American colony or state. Some enslaved people lived in nuclear families with a mother, father, and children. In these cases, each family member belonged to the same owner. Others lived in near-nuclear families in which the father had a different owner than the mother and children. (para. 2)

The separation of parents from children is a cruel injustice to any human being. The African Diaspora endured many disruptions of their family life, first disruption from the continent family and now disruptions from families in the new world. Unfortunately, the sale and re-sale of the enslaved is a continuous normal process. Williams (2020) further explained that “enslaved people lived with the perpetual possibility of separation through the sale of one or more family members” (para. 6). How was it possible to

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endure and survive such hardship and disruptions? Smart (2019) theorized this extremely well when she explained how Indigenous knowledge and skills were embodied within the slave’s physical frames and then transmitted to subsequent generations via oral and epic traditions. Although this disruption erased some of their African Indigenous ways, fortunately it did not erase all memories of their ancestors. We can visualize the negative impact of these interruptions on their lives and the tremendous loss of identity (given an English name and language); loss of family connections; some loss of various ancestral traditions; loss of planned purpose; and loss of dignity of being a human being whose ideals were in line with higher goals and positions. Despite the interruptions of slavery and colonization, we see the resilience of the African people, who survived the brutal journey across the Atlantic, and because of this strength and will to live, they developed ways of preserving some of their ancestral Indigenous ways. They must have found new means to orally transfer rituals, traditions, foods, natural herbal remedies, music, and art from generation to generation, as some of these features are still manifested today in areas where African Diaspora exist. Realistically, we understand that what has transpired (in the enslaved) over the centuries is a mixture of European, African, and the local Indigenous peoples’ cultures and ideas. And we also know that because human beings are not static, past social structures and ideologies will influence what we do and how we think. Undoubtedly, we can see evidence of colonial influences on the enslaved, and on the African colonized regions, not only in culture and language but also in the educational, religious, and governmental systems. The influence of the African Diaspora was removed from narratives for many centuries; however, there is a thirst for truth, and many scholars are re-writing and re-inserting African Indigenous ways of knowing and doing that were previously blotted out.

References Angeles, L. (2013). On the causes of the African slave trade. Kyklos, 66(1), 1–26. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12008 Asante, M. (1987). The Afrocentric idea. Temple University Press. Carruthers, J. (1999). Intellectual warfare. Third World Press.

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Collins. (2020). Indigenous definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved January 22, 2021, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/indigenous Davidson, B. (2014). West Africa before the colonial era: A history to 1850. Routledge. Caravans of Gold Written. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS oZ07LXnKo&list=PL6mz4AK-­lTo6KOzj309JKOzssfFArBxiQ&index=3 Ebron, P. A. (2009). Beyond the written document: Looking for Africa in African American culture. Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from http://nationalhumanitiescenter. org/tserve/freedom/1609-­1865/essays/aaculture.htm Guess, T. J. (2006). The social construction of whiteness: Racism by intent, racism by consequence. Critical Sociology, 32(4), 649–673. https://doi.org/ 10.1163/156916306779155199 Handler, J. S. (2000). Slave medicine and Obeah in Barbados, circa 1650 to 1834. NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 74(1/2), 57–90. Published by Brill on behalf of the KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. Hilliard-III, A. (1986). Pedagogy in ancient Kemet. In J.  H. Carruthers & M.  Karenga (Eds.), Kemet and the African worldview: Research, rescue, and restoration (1st ed.). University of Sankore Press. Hilliard-III, A. (2000). Introduction. In A. T. Browder, From the Browder file: 22 essays on the African American experience. The Institute of Karmic Guidance. Jhutyms, M. H. (2016). The spiritual warriors are healers (2nd ed.). Charles Child Publishing. Jhutyms, M. H. (2017). Mentchu-hotep and the Spirit of the Medjay. Xlibris. Kaya, H. (2015). Revitalizing African Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge production. African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic, 10(3), 8–11. Lake, O. (1995). Toward a Pan-African identity: Diaspora African repatriates in Ghana. Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/10. 2307/3317462 Lapland. (2020). General definition of Indigenous peoples. www.arcticcentre.org. Retrieved July 10, 2020, from https://www.arcticcentre.org/EN/arcticregion/Arctic-­Indigenous-­Peoples/Definitions# Maakmaah, K. (2016). Return to the origins welcome the Debasah generation. The Sunnyside Magazine Online: Community News and Culture. https://sunnysidemagazine.org/2016/03/%ef%bf%bcreturn-­to-­the-­origins-­welcome­the-­debasah-­generation/#more-­3410 Mazama, A. (2016, April 12). Ama Mazama—Homeschooling Black children [Video Broadcast]. https://youtu.be/E2He53-­T4k0 Meniooh, B. (2010). Preserving traditional culture. The Sunnyside Magazine (8.4). https://sunnysidemagazine.org/2010/02/preserving-­traditional­culture/#more-­774

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MeritahWisdom. (2021). Why do we exist? Retrieved January 22, 2021, from https://meritahwisdom.ca/ Morodenibig, N. (2011). Philosophy podium. Firefly Productions. Mucina, D. (2011a). Story as research methodology. Alternative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 7(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/117 718011100700101 Nandy, A. (2009). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery of self under colonialism (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Nantambu, K. (2001, June 15). Ancient Egypt’s role in European history. http:// www.trinicenter.com/kwame/20010615c.htm Obenga, T. (1992). Ancient Egypt & Black Africa: A student’s handbook for the study of Ancient Egypt in philosophy, linguistics & gender relations. Karnak House. Obenga, T. (1995). Readings in precolonial Central Africa. Karnak House. Oshobugie, O. (2019). An autoethnography: A research into my educational journey of self discovery and coming to know through the lens of African indigenous knowledge (MA). University of Toronto. Owusu-Ansah, F., & Mji, G. (2013). African Indigenous knowledge and research. African Journal of Disability, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v2i1.30 Oxford. (2020). Indigenous | Definition of Indigenous by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of Indigenous. Retrieved January 22, 2021, from https://www.lexico.com/definition/indigenous Sarpong, P. (2002). Peoples differ: An approach to inculturation in evangelisation. Sub-Saharan Publishers. Shenmira, N. (2013). The Kemetic Way of Life spoken by a Dogon Priest [Video]. https://youtu.be/hsObqwTUU8U Shenmira, N. (2016a). Ancestral Bloodlines told by Naba Iritah Shenmira [Video]. https://youtu.be/dsUVLbFsiVs Shenmira, N. (2016b). Kem graduation: Reconquest of the self. The Sunnyside Magazine Online (15.6). https://sunnysidemagazine.org/2016/04/ reconquest-­of-­the-­self/#more-­3453 Slavery and Remembrance website. African Diaspora Culture. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0057 Smart, C. A. (2019). African oral tradition, cultural retentions, and the transmission of knowledge in the West Indies. IFLA Journal, 45(1), 16–25. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0340035218823219 Stewart, G. (2017). What does ‘Indigenous’ mean, for me? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(8), 740–743. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017. 1302050 UN. (2020). Retrieved July 10, 2020, from https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf Wallace, D. (2015). Rethinking religion, magic, and witchcraft in South Africa: From colonial coherence to postcolonial conundrum. Journal for the Study of

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Religion, 28(1), 23–51. Retrieved June 2, 2020, from www.jstor.org/ stable/24805679 Wane, N., Torres, R. A., & Nyaga, D. (2017). African Indigenous governance from spiritual lens. Handbook of Indigenous education, 293–307. Wasseker, M. (2019). The talking drum: Cost of the African fest. Sunnyside (19.1), 2–10. WHO. (2020). WHO | Indigenous populations. Retrieved July 9, 2020, from https://www.who.int/topics/health_services_Indigenous/en/ Williams, H. A. (2020). How slavery affected African American families. Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-­1865/essays/ aafamilies.htm

CHAPTER 9

Seeking the African Indigenous Ways of Being in Academia: The Intersecting Journeys of Two Black Women from Different Historical Colonial Experiences—Part Two Unlearning, Relearning, and Remembering: A Dialogue Between Two Black Women Betty Walters and Osholene Oshobugie Upiomoh

Betty’s Journey: Seeking That Which Was Lost I am deep into the twenty-first century, and I am now being exposed to what is Africa, and what it should mean to me. January 2020, I enrolled in a course entitled African Classics: Decolonial Thought in Education with

B. Walters Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Department of Management, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_9

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Professor Njoki Wane, and although I was interested in Africa, I was not particularly keen on finding out anything about my African Ancestry. This course started my journey to enlightenment. I want to establish the premise that I felt conflicted between my lived experiences as a Black person, and what I knew about Africa, and what I am now learning through course materials and the lived experiences of my African Ancestors. Here I will introduce my first organic poem that is solely from my perspective of my African Ancestors; furthermore, it is not to be taken literally, nor is it intended to be offensive to Africans in any way: Forever Present: My Ancestors walked. barefoot in Africa They have no faces. They have no voices. Only vast empty spaces…. Betty

My journey begins with my positionality as a Barbadian born in the Caribbean to parents of mixed origins; therefore, I never thought of myself as African, even though my skin color is Black. My grandparents, parents, and siblings never mentioned slavery, Africa, or African Ancestry; therefore, I did not see myself as a slave descendant, but rather saw Africans as others (outside of myself). The womb, the beginning of my life with my parents is all I know. It seems that no one I knew remembered Africa; therefore, how can I trace anything or anyone back to the continent? My roots are mixed with Black, Spanish, and Indian. Am I looking within the African continent, the Indian continent, or Spain to find my Ancestral roots? In my country, Blackness was never an issue; it was almost like we were like everyone else. Even when I went to a prestigious high school, I did not regard myself as Black, even though the students there comprised diverse ethnic groups. Being educated in a Eurocentric system of education, all my history lessons were about Britain and Europe. The extent of my knowledge about Africa was that it was called the Dark Continent and that slaves were brought from Africa to Barbados to work on the sugar plantations. This information delivered in a brief matter-of-fact manner O. O. Upiomoh (*) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

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did not encourage any student discussion about slavery or Africa, and studies moved on focusing on historical events of America and Britain. Anything else I learned about the continent was passed down through snippets of folktales or songs which I did not understand because the generation who knew about them had died. Therefore, Africa and being African were “invisible to me”! Excluded from any real knowledge of my Ancestral past and cultural roots, my preconceived notion of Africa was that it had nothing to do with me in Barbados or “Little England” as the Brits favorably called it. I never pursued any further studies of the continent, until now. But what is to be gained by knowing my Ancestry, and if I knew, how would this help/ change me? I did not know the term African Diaspora until I was doing my undergraduate at UofT, and at that time, I still did not fully comprehend that those words were referring to me as part of this Diaspora. Questions began infiltrating my thoughts like: With so many mixtures in my heritage, how would I know where I came from? Does being Black make me African? Don’t Blacks come from various parts of the world? I determined that I am a blended version of two or more nations whose Ancestors tie me to these places of origin and exile. Lake’s (1995) perspective gives some validity to my thoughts: “while there are many differences among Indigenous and Diaspora Africans, the cultural and political dismembering of African communities on either side of the Atlantic by Europeans constitutes a bond that transgresses geographic and temporal boundaries” (p. 22). I began to open my mind to search my childhood for African ways of being and knowing. To my surprise, I began to identify African elements within the Caribbean culture. One of my earliest memories was the type of herbs used for something called “bush tea”. My parents knew the names and they would pick several bushes, boil them, store them, and force us children to drink this “tea” when we were sick, regardless of what illness we had. I now know that many of these bushes were African in origin like cerasee, gullyroot, miraculous, and mini root. I also remembered several other African Indigenous remedies using leaves of the flower fence bush to cure menstrual cramps; using singed oil leaves for fevers; tree bark to make mauby and Hibiscus sabdariffa to make sorrel, which was not only used as a beverage, but for medicine as well. Bush tea is described as (Handler & Jacoby, 1993) “a watery infusions of various plants”, and they also theorized that “African medical traditions played a crucial role in contributing to the foundation[s]” for the folk healing tradition in Barbados “which were established during the period of slavery” (p. 84).

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The basic foods of Africa can be seen in Barbadian choices and preparation. For example, our national dish is called cou-cou which is made of cornmeal and okra. Other foods used as main staples and even in desserts include, but are not limited to, cassava, callaloo, yams, pigeon peas, black-­ eyed peas, and spinach. I must also include a phenomenal fact, and that is Barbados being home to two huge Baobab trees, which is believed were produced from seeds brought from Africa during the slave trade. Additionally, The Encyclopedia Britannica website attested to this space being unusual to the Baobab, seeing that it is known as the “Tree of Life” and “found throughout the drier regions of Africa”. The Go Barbados homepage also made mention of the rarity and magnificence of the Baobab in Barbados and stated that it was brought from West Africa and is over one thousand years old! Another thing I recalled was the significance of protecting the umbilical cord of the newborn. It was to be buried deeply in the earth to guard it from animal or human disruption and to prevent harm or evil from coming to the baby. I believe this ritual knowledge was orally passed down from our African Ancestors. I recently called my 95-year-old mother in Barbados to discuss what I remembered about home remedies and words of African origin. She was astonished that I recalled these childhood things, and she verified them. I can now see how in Barbados the African Indigenous traditional foods, healing antidotes, spirituality, and many other areas known and unknown formed the base of our ways of knowing and doing that has persisted through the centuries. An area of knowledge that brings awareness and power to me is that my African Ancestors were very deep in spirituality. As a Christian, this area of my historical past is very important to me. Many scholars confirmed that Africa was where religions originated including Christianity and Islam. African Indigenous spirituality relies on guidance from the higher power and Ancestors to help with significant decision-making efforts. I totally believe that humans are made up of spirit, soul, and body, and that there are ways to communicate with God, while others may emphasize communicating to Ancestors. The most nagging question for me concerning Christianity is: Is my idea of Christianity the same as my African Ancestors, providing that they too were Christians? One major difference is that I am not inclined to seek out or invoke my Ancestors for guidance and wisdom; however, I would be interested in hearing from a sister/ brother from Africa who has first-hand knowledge of this type of experience. Olupona (2015) explains that this practice “testifies to the inclusive nature of traditional African spirituality by positing that deceased progenitors still play a role in the lives of their living descendants” (Q. 1)

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Another area of concern is what I heard about African spirituality through supernatural means called Obeah, considered as a form of witchcraft. Most of the knowledge about Obeah in Barbados was passed down through folktales from our seniors. They warned us not to visit or hire an Obeah man, and although everyone in the community knew who the Obeah man was, it was almost like a well-kept neighborhood secret. People were very afraid to refer to them by name for fear of being punished or cursed. They described this person who has powers to heal, to curse, and to lift curses. This person had the ability to communicate with the dead and other spirits to gain insight into peoples’ problems and knowledge of how to fix things. People who paid for this service would be given specific instructions: from taking a bush bath, chanting certain words, placing, or taking objects from the person or their home, speaking curses against someone, to spreading chicken blood on the body. Handler and Jacoby (1993) in his article confirms the status of the Obeah man when he stated, “Obeah Negroes were considered to possess supernatural power”; and they were regarded as diviners who “is considered a social asset and generally enjoys respect and honour within his community” (pp. 65, 67). Since I have no first-hand knowledge of Obeah and its activities, it is difficult for me to form an opinion; however, I must say that it sure scared the heck out of me when I was a child. Looking at my course material that relates to this topic, there was one article that made me think deeply about the meaning of Christianity. It is entitled Opening to Spirit by Caroline Shola Arewa, and I needed to understand which “spirit” I was opening to (perhaps an Ancestor’s spirit), and if this was a traditional (African) practice? I was skeptical of involving myself in such a venture. Olupona (2015) validated the deep connection between the living and the dead in African spirituality in this way: Some Africans believe that the Ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. [And that] … overall, Ancestors are believed to occupy a higher level of existence than living human beings and are believed to be able to bestow either blessings or illness upon their living descendants. (Q. 3)

The above quote seems to imply that Africans are both in awe and fearful of their Ancestors’ supernatural powers. Are there any boundaries in place to guard the human spirit from every spirit (good/evil) on the continent? Do Africans hear their Ancestors speak? How do Africans differentiate between the voices of their Ancestors, God, or demonic spirits?

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Now, I will tell of a recurring dream I had as a teenager. In the dream I felt as if the main character was me (even though it was a male), and I assumed his experiences as my own. It was night, and there were trees all around like a forest or jungle. This Black young man was running, and I could see he was being chased. He was panting and very scared, but he was not fast enough, he got caught by some other men. He was angry and bravely spoke to them in a harsh manner telling them that they had no right to do this, and how they had angered him. One of the men retaliated and held down the young man with the help of the other men, and he told the young man that he would never speak again. Taking a knife, he cut off half the young man’s tongue. I woke up with a rapid heartbeat and sweating all over. After several times of dreaming this dream, I became afraid to sleep and finally told my mother who helped me to get rid of this nightmare by praying two Psalms every night. This is the first time I have mentioned this dream since then, it goes to show the power in the spiritual realm to connect this dream with this course. It makes me wonder if this young man was one of my African Ancestors who was kidnapped and brought to Barbados. What caused this dream to resurface at this time? What is the real meaning of this dream? Another aspect of African influence in the Caribbean was the music. Much of our calypso and reggae rhythms originated from the enslaved who came here. For example, the history of the steelpan developed in Trinidad can be traced back to the enslaved Africans who were brought to the islands during the 1700s. In retrospect, I can see where many islanders developed a social consciousness about Africa through the music and lyrics of various island artists like Bob Marley’s song “War”, Peter Tosh’s song “African”, Merchant’s song “Um Ba Ya Oh”, and Eddy Grant’s song “Gimme Hope Jo Anna”. There are other lyrics that celebrated many aspects of the country’s culture, which no longer exist today, but in singing these songs, I reminisced about these events and activities that once were portrayed. Unfortunately, even though I listened and danced to the music, I did not truly understand the message nor took it seriously until now. As they say, knowledge is power and being in this course at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/ UOFT) was a revelation for me concerning African life and life ways. In fact, it was the beginning of my interest in Africa. There were so many aspects of Africa and its people that I was ignorant of. I was impressed, to say the least, by the level of creativity, the majesty of their royalty, the inspirational architectural structures, the agricultural ingenuity, and their

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academic prowess in math and science. Contributions listed below from great scholars like Diop and Sertima established Blacks’ credibility and progressiveness prior to European invasions. Diop (1974) provides much physical evidence that shows Blacks’ contributions to progress in pre-colonial times: like the stone monuments in Ethiopia, Nubia, and Zimbabwe; the great tombs and metallurgical workshops of Kumbi; the pyramids of Sudan; and the well-established monarchies in Ghana, Mali, Gao, and Yatenga. In addition, explorers attributed authentic hieroglyphic writings like Njoya in Cameroon and Vai in Sierra Leone to Blacks. Sertima (1976) depicts some of the Black royalty in Africa by presenting evidence of the Black kings of the 25th dynasty who reigned around 751–654 B.C. In addition, Ilmi (2019) provides a deep thoughtful account of African philosophy that it is “a moral and ethical communal existence built on notions of collective social responsibility to one’s clan, family and community, their Ancestors and the Creator” (p. 7). This statement encompasses every aspect of African life of doing and thinking. He also made a relevant observation that the traditional philosophies are implanted in Africans from the cradle to the grave. I see this in my own life as I continually narrate proverbs or stories that my parents told me when I was very young and reflect on how our community helped and cared for everyone. These philosophies have guided and continue to direct my life and have helped me to acquire wisdom. I also agree with him that African philosophy embodies wisdom as a being that is connected to a greater purpose in life because wisdom is the principal thing. Because of the impact of these realities in my own life, I think it is extremely important to believe the myths, proverbs, folklore, and stories of African philosophies that have been passed down from generation to generation. In a class comprising many sisters and brothers from Africa, I felt their hearts cry out in passionate indignation and sorrow over how Africans are negatively portrayed in the world, which is mainly due to false historical reporting from White researchers, authors, and navigators. This course unearthed great emotional highs and lows for me when I read the articles and watched Basil Davidson’s documentaries about Africa. I recalled early in the class, one of my peers asked me, “Don’t you want to know who your Ancestors were?” to which I quickly retorted, “No, I really do not have any desire to find out.” I can tell that she was extremely disappointed, and her reaction made me feel uncomfortable to the point where I began to question why I felt so disconnected from Africa.

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As the course progressed, my preconceived Eurocentric ideologies changed, and for the first time I felt proud to be Black, and to be associated with Africa. The veil was lifted, and the true nature of the continent was revealed. I experienced a sense of inner healing through this journey of enlightenment, but I don’t exactly know what to do with this insight that I have gained. One of the highlights of the course was when one of my peers decided that all of us should have African names, and that going forward we should be called by these names. I chose to be called queen mother without knowing the significance of this title. Sudarkasa (1986) described women in pre-colonial times as “conspicuous in high places” and that “they were queen-mothers; queen-­ sisters; princesses, chiefs, and holders of other offices in towns and villages; occasional warriors” and even the title of “supreme monarch” (p.  91). The African name for queen mother, according to my Ghanaian classmate, is Ohemaa; and coincidentally 59,000 Africans were brought to Barbados from Ghana during the slave trade. However, the most burning questions on my mind are the following: Why is it always the Diaspora who needs to re-connect to the continent? Does the continent ever think about the Diaspora and the difficulties their Ancestors endured because of the slave trade? Will this experience in class develop deeper and more positive relationships between the continent and the Diaspora? This course had a huge impact on my psyche in that it brought back childhood memories, unexplained dreams, poems, and even prompted many conversations with my 95-year-old mom and some of my siblings to substantiate African words and herbs that I suddenly remembered. I truly believe that Africa is in us—it is not just a continent. How can we break the barriers between ourselves (Blacks all over the world), and be a unified Black race? Here I present another of my organic poems: Taken: I did not leave you willingly. my sister I was snatched away. my sister By non-black predators my sister By men without hearts my sister Finally, we are together again. Ohemaa

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Osho’s Response to Ohemaa’s Questions: Reclaiming That Which Was Lost I will begin this session by first honoring the Divine world, the world of our Ancestors and our Mother Earth, whose benevolence gives us life. For I am honored to be in the position to speak of our African Indigenous ways to be one of the many tiny bridges to help reclaim that which we thought was lost. I am of great honor to now refer to my sister, my co-­ writer, by her new preferred African name, Ohemaa. A name that is Indigenous to our Twi people of West Africa. And yes, my dearest sister, Ohemaa, “Finally, we are together again.” Your poem is healing; thank you for it. As with many teaching stories in African Indigenous communities, each story carries with it a lesson about knowing the value of useful knowledge (Washhek, 2016). This humble and moving story by Ohemaa reminds me of the all-too-common experience that most of us share. Washhek (2016) puts it brilliantly and simply when he said: African education (called initiation) draws a line between useful knowledge and useless knowledge. Useless knowledge is all around us, and we pay for this knowledge with our very lives: 12+ years of our lives for a secondary school diploma level of that knowledge; 4+ years for the bachelor’s degree level; 2+ years for the master’s levels; 1+ more years for specialised levels (MBA or LLB or MD or others); 4+ years for the highest levels (DLit, PhD, LLD or MFA). You then take these certificates, like vouchers, and stand in line for work/money at different sites (just like plantations) so that you can now buy what your communities were already producing before these plantations took over the land. (Para. 1)

The above expression naturally and beautifully illustrates a wonder that exist in some of us of how one spends all their lives being educated, and end up still asking such questions, as those in this story posed by Ohemaa. These are questions that should have been resolved in childhood. But then, it would lead us to another examination of a topic of some sort that analyzes if the goals of this so-called education were to educate us or to produce what it is producing exactly—confused ignorant adults as I once was. It is to this end that I salute my sister’s courage for taking the effort to learn, question, and problematize that which the modern system has taken away and made not available. This part of the chapter is an attempt to answer the questions posed in the above story. The responses are not a claim to an absolute answer or

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knowledge, but only a minute introduction to the possibilities of our African Indigenous ways of seeing the world. While textbooks inform the sources of modern education, our African Indigenous ways of knowing “is a living experience that is informed by (our) Ancestral voices” (Wane, 2008, p. 2), and elders (Dei, 2000). I will also begin my entry into these questions by stating that learning does happen in discomfort (Lopez, 2017). This means that in sharing our truth about our African Indigenous ways, it might conflict with preconceived notions of our modern learning in all contexts, from social, academic to biology, and religion. I therefore beckon on our readers and my co-writer, sister Ohemaa, to be open-­ minded. By this, I elucidate for the possibilities to be critical and at least possess a willingness to search actively for evidence against one’s favored beliefs, and to weigh such evidence fairly when it is available. For the effort to do this, I say thank you. Through a deep reflection, Ohemaa posed her first question: “Am I looking within the African continent, the Indian continent, or Spain to find my Ancestry?” To begin an answer to this question, I first like to reflect on Ohemaa’s statement when she said, “The womb, the beginning of my life with my parents is all I know.” I am thankful to Ohemaa for this thought. Following this thought, it is important that I share with us, from our African Indigenous teachings, the importance of our Ancestors and why we hold very highly Ancestral venerations that goes far beyond the womb where we come from. This is one of the reasons why we were known as the people who worship or honor their dead, and this by nature is our Ancestral way of being. So, what is our Ancestral way? Through initiation, that is, our African Indigenous Ancestral education, we comprehend the logic to our Ancestral ways, how our Ancestors and elders lived it since time, and how they have passed it down to us (Shenmira, 2016a). One on these many teachings, as beautifully explained in the words of our Maakheru, Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig, nudges us to reflect in this manner: let us consider that as human beings we respect all Gods. Let us also consider that whatever God each one of us believe in, be it God, Allah, Buddha, etc. we must acknowledge one very important matter. Which is, that for us to be here, we did not fall through the sky but came through our mothers and fathers. This means that no matter how powerful one thinks that their God is, with all the powers that we allocate to them, they, these Gods, could not make us without

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passing through another human being. It means that they could not give us life without going through a body. This further means that if a pure and holy being could not access us without going through another human being, how could we access them (whichever God or Gods) without going back to them through the same channel? And this is our Ancestral path, hence our Ancestral prayers through our Ancestral spirits. Every one of us reading this text today also came through a mother and father, and again, that is our Ancestral path. This also means that the blood that we carry in our blood is not ours but was passed from generation to generation. It is like a river that never dries, flowing from one generation to another. Comprehending this concept sets a good stage to address questions about our Ancestry and Ancestors.

Giving this context on the importance of Ancestry, a simple response to Ohemaa’s question of where to begin looking for her Ancestry because of the many mixed roots will be this: Africans are the most ancient of beings; African Civilizations in the African continent is the cradle of all civilizations; humanity began in Africa (ben-Jochannan, 1989, 1997; Clarke, 1992, 1993; Shenmira, 2016; Sutton, 2000). Since having African roots, amongst others, I will begin by focusing my search on my African Ancestry, if this were me. For if humanity and the beginning of civilization, regardless of the different geographical location of India or Spain, began in Africa, all roots then come from and leads back to Africa. This is not meant as a blanket statement to say that everyone is from Africa or that Ohemaa’s Indian or Spanish roots are less important. Rather, given the context of the discussion where the willful displacement of our origins was an attack to that which gave the world its humanity (Shenmira, 2016), I will therefore look to that point. However, within our African Indigenous context, we do have the Earth’s energy readings, which provides solution to such quest for knowledge about ones specific Ancestry. Our African Indigenous elders say that life evolves as a cycle where that which was lost today may be found tomorrow. This question is a fundamental one that is focused on reclaiming that which was lost to so many of us. Ohemaa’s second question addresses, “What is to be gained by knowing her Ancestry, and how would knowing help or change her?” The importance of this question is given credence by the teaching of our African Indigenous philosophy. In knowing our Ancestry, we thereby know our Ancestors. In our tradition or African Indigenous ways, it is through our Ancestors that we can achieve our connection with the Divine world, and with the supreme beings or creator (Morodenibig, 2011; Morodenibig & Shenmira,

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2017; Shenmira, 2016). The answer to Ohemaa’s first question establishes the ground to help us understand why this is so. It is important to know that a dead relative is not an Ancestor. Yet, Ancestors are allies for us on the other side of our existence, they are powerful allies. The immediate benefits that we see when we honor and follow the ways of our Ancestors are reflected in the life we lead, and in solutions that are presented to help resolve our collective problems. According to our African Indigenous worldview, our Ancestors continue to parent us from the other side as they care about us. In the Divine world, our Ancestors have been given charge of our world and daily lives (Morodenibig & Shenmira, 2017). Following this worldview, the benefits of knowing one’s Ancestry connects them with one’s Ancestors. The process of connecting with one’s Ancestors comes with it the unfolding of knowledges about one’s family roots, family bloodline, gifts of the bloodline, exposure to one’s destiny, guidance by the Ancestors, protection, and the ability to live a life of clarity and safety (Morodenibig & Shenmira, 2017; Shenmira, 2013; Z. Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). This process returns one back into the cultural foundations from which we have been uprooted through the conquest of our lands, colonization, and slavery. In other words, knowledge of our Ancestors and Ancestral ways helps to ground us. For when one knows of their Ancestral lineage, it helps one to correct issues and avoid issues that must deal with the bloodline, preventing us from walking around feeling lost (Z. Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). Similarly, to the first question, Ohemaa shared a matter that infiltrated her thought in relation to her first time hearing the term of the African Diaspora. In wondering if this term referred to her as a part of this Diaspora, she asked, “With so many mixtures in my heritage, how would I know where I came from? Does being Black make me African? Don’t Blacks come from various parts of the world?” This question is a fundamental one to the search for oneself. It has been answered to a large extent in the first response given to Ohemaa’s question. Yes, Ohemaa is right when she wondered that African/Black people come from various parts of the world. African/Black people were the original Indigenous inhabitant of our planet Earth (Asante, 1994; Carruthers, 1995; Dei, 2000; Hilliard-­ III, 2000; Jhutyms, 2003, 2016, 2017; Kambon, 2019; Nantambu, 2001; Obenga, 1992, 1995; Robinson, 2009, 2018). We were living sovereign lives before we were enslaved, first in our inhabitants outside the continent

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of what is called Africa today, before we were then captured from Africa and enslaved (Morodenibig, 2011). I thank Ohemaa for expressing the question about the importance of her religion and a genuine quest to comprehend if her religions practice is the same as her Ancestors. With the utmost clarity, it is important to note that all forms of the major world’s religion today have their roots in Africa (ben-Jochannan, 1970). The fundamentals of their teachings are taken from the peripheral of African traditions (J.  Smalls, community circle, March 24, 2017). However, it is not accurate to ascribe Christianity to our African Ancestors. Our Ancestors were Indigenous to the Land and revered Nature as sacred. They submitted to the Divine order of things, in ways that preserve and harmonize with Nature. Within our Indigenous context, we still do. Our Ancestors were never Christians. Christianity was not a thought until missionaries came in, primarily to open the gates for the colonization and enslavement of our Ancestors and lands and this was only too recent (Arnaut, 2012; Kambon, 2019; Z. Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). Ohemaa, in a humble way, also addresses her next set of questions: “Are there any boundaries in place to guard your spirit from every spirit (good/evil) on the continent? Do Africans hear their Ancestors speak? How do they differentiate between the voices of their Ancestors, God, or demonic spirits?” I will begin by answering the second part of the question in this group of questions. Yes, African Indigenous people, practicing our African traditions, hear our Ancestors speak. It is not a figment of one’s imagination. These are our parents who are now on the other side of existence, where we are only separated by a veil. For us to penetrate through to them, there are simple rituals of purity and chants in our primal language that we utilize to access them daily. Also, after the passing of a dead relative, rituals are done to help such relative become an Ancestor, and through such ritual, the Ancestor can appear and communicate with its relative in real time. The challenge we face when we ask ourselves the questions that indicate the fear that we feel in response to opening ourselves up to spirit is seated on a problematic foundation where we and our practices have been demonized (Z.  Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). Within our African Indigenous context, living in our Indigenous world would imply that one lives in accordance with Divine principles and code of human behavior that have been given to us by the Divine world. Living in an Indigenous context would mean that there are things that we would

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do and not do, there are taboos that we would observe. Following these principles and living accordingly observing these taboos do not allow us to worry about attracting demonic spirits (Z. Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). Also, there are things that we do that serve to protect us. The first begins with the Earth’s energy readings. We also take spiritual baths and offer offerings among other things. With regard to the question about how we can differentiate between the voices of our Ancestors, God, and demonic spirit, I like to briefly state that it is very clear, there is no confusion. Perhaps, the question derives from a lens where one imagines that there is an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other shoulder trying to convince the individual about actions that they should take. Within our Indigenous context, systematic processes and structure make it clear. Spirituality is completely technical as our elders and priests teach us to comprehend this, there is no guess about it. There is no confusion between the communication with our Ancestors and with a Divinity or the term God as indicated in modern religions. In addressing the next question, I like to begin by thanking sister Ohemaa for sharing her most inner private moment with us, known only to her and to the Creator, hence placing us in such position of privilege. Again, thank you, I will do my best to honor this privilege with my response and with honesty. This moment is the experience of her dream as shared in the story. To the question about what caused the dream to resurface at this time and the real meaning of the dream, I can say this that is known. Our Ancestors do all that they can to communicate with us and we shut them off. For through our energies, thoughts, actions, and religions practices, we use these tools to prevent them from showing up in our dreams. As a result, they are no longer able to visit us or share with us. Sometimes, they also communicate by shaking us up, making sure that things are not going right in one way or the other, to cause us to wake up and to seek information and ways that will eventually lead us to them. Therefore, for them to help us, they need our help from this plane. We help them be the powerful allies that they can be to us by feeding them. If we were in an African Indigenous context where that dream was experienced, we would seek an interpretation immediately to the dream through our priests. However, while, I cannot speak to the meaning of the dream, I am of hope that it is part of the awaking that is directing our sister Ohemaa to seek her way home to our Ancestral embrace. Oomen, my sister has asked the most burning questions on her mind. She questions: “Why is it always the Diaspora who needs to re-connect to the

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continent? Does the continent ever think about the Diaspora and the difficulties their Ancestors endured because of the slave trade? Will this experience in class make us closer or develop positive relationships between the continent and the Diaspora?” To these questions, I will refer to a quote of one of our Priest. He explains: When you have been educated by those who made you a slave; when you find yourself worshipping the god of those who have tried and are still trying to destroy you; when you place your health in the hands of the same people who do not believe you have a right to exist as yourself. … It is clear that as a culture or civilization group, you are simply advancing towards your final destruction. All these happens to us only because the colonizer has become the definer of our values. (2005, p. 34)

Analysis of the above quote holds true to Ohemaa’s journey as stated here, where our modern education taught us to fear ourselves and limit ourselves to slavery and colonized subjects. Herein, Shenmira (2016) made a clear statement that to defeat a people, you must disconnect them from their past and then isolate them as a group. As the story in this chapter shows, one of the primary ways that this was done was by referencing our Ancestors and Ancestral ways as evil. The notion taught is that we are in darkness, and we do things in darkness since we are savages. So, the group who kills, steals, and destroys educates the other group with no history of such behavior to believe that which destroys them is saving them from their savagery. This prompted Shenmira (2016) to ask this profound question: How could someone with a brain think about people who lived before them as savages and barbarians when they hold no history of these behaviors? Our accepting of this false teaching is reflected in our behaviors when we distance ourselves away from our Ancestors or from anything African or feel shame to identify as Africans. Some of us live our entire lives never even using the word Ancestors because we are taught by the modern system that it’s evil. We proceed in living our lives by forgetting about them, those who lived before us. We live our lives like we just sprung up by ourselves from nowhere. We continue this attitude without considering that we still have these people in us. The parts of our bodies are contributions, a reflection of our different Ancestors, a resemblance of who they are. In rejecting them, we reject ourselves because they, our Ancestors, are us and we are them. It is in doing this, living far away separated in mind, spirit, and body from our Ancestors, to fit into the modern world, that we, funny but true, consider civilized.

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Within our tradition, that is not civilization, but rather humans or humanity degenerating downhill, beyond where the animals will not go (Shenmira, 2016). In the animal world, even dogs identify their fathers and mothers; they possess knowledge of family, they express sorrow for their dead and those suffering (Shenmira, 2016). However, within our modern thought, or as modern people, we do not see the world this way, and yet, we think that we are the ones that are civilized and moving forward (Shenmira, 2016). Nevertheless, we should at least have the strength to ask the very crucial question. This question becomes, moving forward from where to where? What is our goal? Where is our destination if we continue to function this way? (Shenmira, 2016). The above paragraph is to create a context for a direct answer to the question posed as to why is it always the Diaspora who needs to re-­connect to the continent? The answer is that the African Indigenous people have been reaching out for so long to us in the Diaspora. Our elders that I have encountered here and those at home (Africa) attest to this. “Yet, the child always has to be the one who comes home to the family” (Z. Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). This means that the family (Indigenous African people) do send people out to the diaspora to look for their children, and they have been doing this for hundreds of years. The family—our African Indigenous people—cannot leave home behind, for the children need a home to return to. This further means that we, in the Diaspora, must re-connect, there is no other way around it. Nevertheless, we still have a long standing of African Indigenous peoples reaching out to us to this very day. This means that the parents are reaching out, they are seeking, but is the child willing to come home? For, both hands must be stretched to receive each other. But since on the part of the Diaspora, some feel, according to the question, that they are the only ones seeking home and home is not seeking them. Let us explore what could be behind this thought. The African proverb which illustrates that “what the eyes searches for the eyes sees” is applicable here. The search by the African Indigenous peoples for African descendants and its children outside Africa have never ceased, but also it has not been mainstreamed. For if mainstream is where the eyes look, then the eyes see what it sees. Also, if the eyes, with its infatuation for Europe, looks for a European version of Africa to be proud of Africa, we may not notice the call by our Ancestors and African Indigenous people, even when it’s before our eyes. So, the search is always present, but if Africa is our home, then it is us that must return home. To

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help us comprehend better, I illustrate the African proverb: the fruit will always survive because of the roots, not the other way around. It is the mindset of the colonizer to reduce what happened in the past so that when we see it, it will not affect us in the future (Z. Kamenttah, personal communication, June 29, 2020). We are to believe that the continent is not doing much to welcome us, but they are. Yes, the continent does think of the Diaspora and the difficulties that we face, the continent itself was and is still going through colonization. It is also experiencing the same programing that is done here, where the mainstream media portray negative traits about us, hence we have shame for each other. Consequently, it will take a while for the general population to get the concept shown to them on TV out of their mind just like it took my dearest sister, Ohemaa, all this while to figure out that she is possibly African. However, our African Indigenous ways are still alive, and it calls to us, it is us that shuts them off in our quest to be modernized. It is us that will rather travel to Los Angeles, rather than travel to Africa. So, the battle is now one in which, according to our African proverb, the enemy is now within (Morodenibig, 2011).

Conclusion We have decided to draw our conclusion in two parts. One part reflects sister Osho’s conclusion as she summarizes her message along the lines of the response that is given thus far. The second part summarizes Ohemaa’s concluding thoughts along the lines of the lessons learnt from her search and from the answers she has received. Sister Ohemaa acknowledges that while her journey has just begun, there is no such thing as a conclusion of this journey. Osho’s Conclusion My concluding statement is in form of a response to the closing, yet brilliant question asked by sister Ohemaa: “How can we break the barriers between ourselves (Blacks all over the world), and be a unified Black race?” In other words, where do we go from here? While this is a work in progress, I shall rest my concluding thoughts on the words of Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig. Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig is a Kemetic (Ancient Egyptian) Dogon High-Priest, whose family lineage is of the Naba (priesthood) bloodline of our Pharaonic Nile Valley Civilizations. The Naba

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bloodline has been caretakers of the knowledge that has led human beings to enlightenment since the Pharaonic period (Shenmira, 2016). They were the family clan secretly in charge of the shrines and spiritual matters of the Pharaonic throne. Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig founded the Earth Center at the permission of the Ancestors, Nabas, Kings, and Elders of the community after traveling to many temples and spiritual Elders of the Kemetic spiritual system and going through many intense initiations (Shenmira, 2016). Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig, who is now a Maakheru (One that is true of voice), successfully started the mission in the modern world to provide us with an opportunity and bridge back to our Ancestral knowledge. He established a bridge from the traditions to the colonialized world, especially as a way for us, for our brothers and sisters, and all children of Africa, who so wish, to recover, heal, and return home. These traditions have been preserved and protected for thousands of years. There is no better way to share my conclusion about our way forward, than to transcribe a conversation of his thoughts that he shared in a lecture before his transition. Below is his counsel: Eh, people from the diaspora, eh whenever they’re trying something is that eh, they don’t understand that if you’re going to learn something, you are the one that is going to learn something. You’re not going to grade what is being presented to you. You’re not going to judge it because if you judge it, what you’re doing is that you’re reducing it to your values which you were trying to go away from. So, you see, so that’s how it makes it hard for us to grow because umh … the system made us think we are very smart. Yes, but they say we are smart because we’re doing what they want us to do. That doesn’t make us smart you see. So, you want to find that place, and understand and stay quiet to calm yourself. Understand that … there is a civilization that we came from. If we came from that civilization and some of us got lost, some of us got colonized, some of us got enslaved and whatever you want to put it, it happened, that’s a human thing. Now, what is wrong is when you’re coming back home, you don’t come back home with you judging what home is, because if you do that, you really are not you that is coming back home. You’re coming as the agent of whoever colonized you. You understand that? Because mostly, the reason why we don’t recover, we all act as the agents of our slave masters. We reason, the values we hold that are so dear to us, we forgot that they’re the ones that put it there for us. So, that’s why we’re advising this humility, we’re advising people to understand. I mean, we know that 500 years trying to recover from something is not working, we must be doing something wrong. Well, that is what we’re

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doing wrong, we’re going as the agents of our masters. We reasoning as the agents of our masters. Well, they will only teach us how to serve them, and serve them better. So, (pause) I know that your reference point is this system. I know that em, … you know, your values are this system. I know that em, … you know, your sense of what is good and what is bad has been provided by this system. I also know that this system is the one that wants you never to recover from slavery. So, what is it going to be? What is it going to be? You see, in my place eh, during the time of the struggle, we had people that were saying, you know what, if your left hand is standing in the way of your move forward towards your future, your freedom, your dignity, cut it off. Because if you say no, you don’t want to cut it off, you just choose to be doomed. It’s better to be a one-handed … it’s better to be a free one-­ handed person, than a two-handed slave. You see, some people say, maybe it’s even better to die standing than to live eternally on your knees. And these are things that we need to put there and reason and think about because really, we are being distracted into thinking that the enemy is that bad wolf coming from somewhere, we will see him coming. No, that’s not the enemy. The enemy is the one that gets you without you knowing he gets you. For that to happen, they get you from inside, they become that evil that puts you so much pride into you. That you know you’re relying on nothing, yet you think you have all the reasons to be the proudest person on Earth. You see! Then you become what we call a panhandler. You dig this hole too close to this one, and then you dig that hole too close this one. And em, you know when it helps you use Chinese thought to explain whatever you’re doing, then when it helps, you use eh Japanese thought, and then you use eh you know Italian thought, and you use whatever, Indian thought. You use everything, while all what you need to do is learn your thoughts. That is simple. You see, now our pride is based on the values of other people. We are Doctor this, we are what … eh … meditation whatever guru that, we are Chinese eh … how can a Black man be a Chinese doctor? What? We are the Chinese this. We are the whatever. All while all we need to do is learn what belongs to us. You see. Just one good reason, that’s all we need. And yet, we go for thousands of reasons to maintain us into worthless beings’ position. So, pay this attention. Pay this attention. Already, it’s so abnormal that the same religion that has enslaved you, you find yourself thinking it will free you. It’s already abnormal. You see, it’s already weird. It’s weird. I mean like how we tell people, even a dog knows not to go back where he has been hurt. Even a dog knows how to do that. Even a dog knows, so what does that make of us? You see, what does that make of us? (Maakheru, 2020)

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The above speech is simple and clear to comprehend. It gives us an idea of what our way forward should be, going from here. The only way to honor ourselves and our Ancestors is by reclaiming our Ancestral culture and values. To do this, we learn our Ancestral ways through our Ancestral educational system—we call this, initiation. I hope that our infatuation with the modern people called the White man or White woman (White culture), with its modern systems, will not continue to stand in our way of hearing our Ancestors’ call to us. May we find our dignity by bringing honor to our Ancestors within our Indigenous cultural and Ancestral jurisdiction. Imin, Iseh, Ase, Amina! Ohemaa’s Conclusion My greatest thanks to sister Osholene for her support during this writing. She has been patient and gracious to me, especially during those times when I expressed my opinions or had difficulty comprehending the African Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. I find her responses to my queries and concerns to be very thoughtful and comprehensive and have certainly given me much to think about. Her genuine connection to her Ancestry is apparent in her deep knowledge and passionate explanations of who they are, and the place of honor and importance that they hold in her life. I would however like to state that I too understand that we carry the blood of our Ancestors in our veins, as this blood flows from generation to generation; therefore, in this sense we are products of our Ancestors. This Ancestral connection by blood can never be severed, and maybe one of the keys to discovering our Ancestors. The other reference to her piece is about the Diaspora and who should seek whom. In this instance, I am relieved to hear that home, our mother land—Africa—has been reaching out to seek us and bridging the gap. Let me clarify, I am a mother and grandmother, and if any of my offspring was missing or left the home, I would search everywhere to find them. I would leave my home and my possessions behind. I do not think I could rest until I knew they were safe. The final reference to sister Osholene’s response is to the mention of the Maakheru who provide a bridge from the traditions to the colonized world. Herein indeed lies the key, for if both Diaspora and continent know how to find and use the bridge, this will bring us closer. I am not sure if I can write a conclusion to this piece because my journey has just begun. I think this would be like a semi-conclusion to be continued. Having gone through the experience of seeking and finding

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out more than I expected about Africa, I can honestly say that my admiration for my African Ancestry has increased astronomically. The African Diaspora for various reasons feels displaced, excluded, and added to this must deal with cultural duality. Not feeling included as a bona fide African kept me in limbo about discovering my African Ancestry; however, being given the name Ohemaa, brought a surprising sense of belonging. Unexpected events like the Covid-19 pandemic, the senseless murder of George Floyd by a White policeman in the US in May 2020, and the anti-racism demonstrations and protests all over the world have contributed to Blacks/Africans rising as one to fight for justice. My wish is that this togetherness and these relationships birthed out of a desire to fight for what is right do not fizzle out, but that Black/African people continue to develop strong support for each other, not only in times of crisis, but in times of peace as well. But what is the next chapter of my journey? Are my sister and I going to develop more of a relationship than that of peers in an educational environment? I believe we can create more opportunities to get together, to socialize, and to support each other. What do you think? I would like to follow the example of my Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley who is a trailblazer for trying to build better relationships with our Ghanaian family. Caribbean Life News (2019) reported that Prime Minister Mottley took soil from the Ghanaian slaves’ graves in Barbados to Ghana where they were given a proper burial in the homeland. Draped around the “coffin” were the flags of Barbados and Ghana. What a symbol of unity and nationhood. Usually to get to Ghana, Barbadians would have to fly to North America or the UK and take a connecting flight to Africa. Prime Minster Mottley pointed out that the shortest distance between Ghana and Barbados is a straight line across the Atlantic and said, “we shall no longer want to go north but work with each other because … [of] the blood that runs in our veins.” Now with air travel agreements between Ghana and the Caribbean, the travel distance will reduce from 38 hours to 8 hours! Barbados Today news on July 31, 2020, informed us that 95 Ghanaian nurses arrived to work in Barbados on a two-year contract. This was also a phenomenal achievement between Ghana and Barbados because the nurses arrived on the inaugural direct flight, which only took eight hours. This shows the commitment between the two countries to build relationships with our African/Black families. Let’s continue to bridge the gap.

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Way Forward My sincere thanks to you my dearest sister, Ohemaa for the above words, you have truly spoken well. Following your lead, it is in the spirit of bridging the gap that I present the ensuing recommendation. At the time of writing this chapter, I, Osho, a traditional woman, is in the season of honoring Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig. It has been 12 years since he transitioned to becoming an Ancestor that we now refer to as the Maakheru. He still leads and supports, from the Ancestral world, those under the umbrella of the tradition that he created while he was here. In respect and in honor of my sister Ohemaa’s journey, and in honor of the journey of others like hers, and of myself, who continues this journey, I again share the message of the Maakheru with us, to serve as my recommendation on a journey such as this. Here is my recommendation in the words of the Maakheru: In my place, we say you know, people, they move, right? People move, people, we move. Paths go everywhere, right? But one thing about paths, they don’t move. You see, eh! Which means, if you get on a path, it only takes you where it goes. That is regardless of how smart you are, whatever is your intention, it doesn’t matter. If you get on that path, where it goes, that’s where it will take you to. You see, ah! When a culture, an ideology that you meet, started by destroying humanity, when you join it, where do you think it will take you to? You just feed it your blood. You become part of the evil of this world. You see, so why don’t we focus and understand that what is not working is just not working, it’s just not working. (Taiwo & Daniel, 2015)

I analyze the above quote; thus, the path of Indigenous societies is diverse, and they worship diverse Divinities (Gods) without ever considering themselves different from each other until, what is now called the White man, found in this a situation to exploit. Despite the diverseness of our Indigenous lives, there is no record of holy wars amongst our diverse African Indigenous societies which the modern world refers to as polytheistic societies. Yet, we take, for example, the modern path of religion which proclaims love, peace, and tolerance, but shamelessly speaks of holy wars. For example, Christianity alone has caused more deaths than the two world wars combined (Jhutyms, 2016; Morodenibig, 2011). The Islamic religion is no different in its destruction of African Indigenous peoples. This modern path continually destroys humanity as we once knew it or

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heard of it, and it produces individuals with less qualities and poor characters. The modern society, through its educational system, has perfected its hold on African Indigenous people by eliminating the knowledge of our historic greatness. For they know that an individual who has no point of reference in history is much easier to manipulate. Hence, I take a lead from the above advice by the Maakheru (2015) and to it, I add what Z. Kamenttah (personal communication, June 29, 2020) shared with me. She admonishes that in this journey, let us be true to ourselves, let us wish for and have knowledge of our true traditional Indigenous societies, let us learn the knowledge of our Ancestors and culture, and most of all, let us have an open heart. Again, thank you sister Ohemaa for the opportunity to have this dialogue and as a way of building a hopeful long-lasting relationship. For when I met you, it was like a meeting of my older sister who I once had, and she was taken away from me and yet I found again. The joy in us meeting as sisters is the same joy we all should share when we meet ourselves despite the displacement that has occurred in our collective memories and history. It should be the joy we gain when we find a once lost treasure. But alas, the same system who benefits from our separateness is the same system that has educated us to be strangers to each other. Hence, this joy is almost never found. Yet, I wish that while you and I despite this education and separateness still found joy in discovering each other, that others will overcome these barriers and see how we are truly brothers and sisters. Imin, Iseh, Ase, Amina!

References Arnaut, K. (2012). Superdiversity: Elements of an emerging perspective. In Language and superdiversity (pp. 59–80). Routledge. Asante, M. K. (1994). Classical Africa. Peoples Publishing Group. Ben-Jochannan, Y. (1970). Africa: Mother of western civilization. Black Classic Press. ben-Jochannan, Y. (1989). Black man of the Nile and his family. Black Classic Press. ben-Jochannan, Y. (1997). Africa: Mother of western civilization. Black Classic Press. Caribbean Life. (2019, December 2). Barbadian-ghanaian bridge over the Atlantic. https://www.caribbeanlife.com/barbadian-ghanaian-bridge-overthe-atlantic/ Carruthers, J. (1995). MDW NTR divine speech: A historiographical reflection of African deep thought from the time of the pharaohs to the present. Karnak House.

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Clarke, J. H. (1992). Introduction. In A. T. Browder (Ed.), Nile valley contributions to civilization (13th ed.). The Institute of Karmic Guidance. Clarke, J. H. (1993). African people in world history. Black Classic Press. Dei, G. J. S. (2000). Rethinking the role of Indigenous knowledges in the academy. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 4(2), 111–132. https://doi. org/10.1080/136031100284849 Diop, C.  A. (1974). The African origin of civilization: Myth or realty (Ed. M. Cook). Lawrence Hill. Handler, J.  S., & Jacoby, J. (1993). Slave medicine and plant use in Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, XLI. Hilliard-III, A. (2000). Introduction. In A. T. Browder (Ed.), From the Browder file: 22 essays on the African American experience. The Institute of Karmic Guidance. Ilmi, A. A. (2019). African traditional philosophies in gender, democracy, and institutional development in Africa. Springer International Publishing. Jhutyms, M. H. (2003). Spiritual warriors are healers (1st ed.). Kera Jhuty Heru Neb-Hu Publishing Company. Jhutyms, M. H. (2016). The spiritual warriors are healers (2nd ed.). Charles Child Publishing. Jhutyms, M. H. (2017). Mentchu-hotep and the spirit of the Medjay. Xlibris. Kambon, Ọ . (2019). Did Afrikans really originate civilisation? Lecture, Accra, Ghana. Lake, O. (1995). Toward a Pan-African identity: Diaspora African repatriates in Ghana. Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 3317462 Lopez, A. (2017). Rocky boats and rainbows culturally responsive leadership from the margin—An Autoethnography. In A. Esmail, A. Pitre, & A. Aragon (Eds.), Perspectives on diversity, equity, and social justice in educational leadership. Rowman & Littlefield. Maakheru, A. F. (2020). Common Magick: Origins and Practices of British Folk Magick. Llewellyn Worldwide. Morodenibig, N. (2011). Philosophy podium. Firefly Productions. Morodenibig, N., & Shenmira, N. (2017). Book of purifications. Firefly. Nantambu, K. (2001, June 15). Ancient Egypt’s role in European history. http:// www.trinicenter.com/kwame/20010615c.htm Obenga, T. (1992). Ancient Egypt & Black Africa: A student’s handbook for the study of ancient Egypt in philosophy, linguistics & gender relations. Karnak House. Obenga, T. (1995). Readings in precolonial Central Africa. Karnak House. Olupona, J. (2015). The spirituality of Africa. Harvard Gazette. https://news. harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/10/the-­spirituality-­of-­africa/ Oomen, B. (2005). Chiefs in South Africa: Law, power and culture in the postapartheid era. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

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Robinson, E. (2018, February 8). Dr Edward W Robinson DNA and Calvin Robinson book The Journey of the Songhai People [In person]. https:// youtu.be/JlNFwGjTjfo Robinson, R. (2009, July 8). African Genesis: Journey of the Songhai People. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZHWbTy7sMw Sertima, V. (1976). They came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America. Random House Trade Paperbacks. Shenmira, N. (2013). The Kemetic way of life spoken by a Dogon Priest [Video]. https://youtu.be/hsObqwTUU8U Shenmira, N. (2016a). Ancestral bloodlines told by Naba Iritah Shenmira [Video]. https://youtu.be/dsUVLbFsiVs Sudarkasa, N. (1986). The status of women in Indigenous African societies. Feminist Studies, 12(1), 91–103. Feminist Studies, Inc. https://www.jstor. org/stable/3177985 Sutton, J. (2000). The Prehistory of East Africa. In J.  Ki-Zerbo (Ed.), General history of Africa. I: Methodology and Africa Prehistory (3rd ed., p.  460). UNESCO Publishing. Taiwo, E. F., & Daniel, A. P. (2015). Revisiting the Yoruba Ethnogenesis: A religiocultural hermeneutics of ancient Egyptian texts. Ogirisi: A New Journal of African Studies, 11, 193–208. Wane, N. (2008). Mapping the field of Indigenous knowledges in anti-colonial discourse: A transformative journey in education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11(2), 183–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320600807667 Washhek, S. (2016). Pursuing personal quality—A welcome to the Sahqara generation. The Sunnyside Magazine Online: Community News and Culture. https://sunnysidemagazine.org/2016/08/pursuing-­personal-­quality-­a-­welcome­to-­the-­sahqara-­generation/

CHAPTER 10

Resistance, Reparation, and Education Awareness: Resurgence of African Identities Nadine Abdel Ghafar, Veraline Akello, and Melanie Blackman

“Before we can create a new world we must first unearth and destroy the myths and realities, the lies and propaganda which have been used to oppress, enslave, incinerate, gas, torture and starve the human beings of this planet. Facing the lies of history is a basic human responsibility. It is unpleasant to do but liberating to accomplish. It liberates all of us.” —Ben Okri, A way of Being Free

N. Abdel Ghafar Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] V. Akello • M. Blackman (*) Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_10

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Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provoke readers, specifically people of African descent, to engage in the process of reclaiming the whole self and the value of nurturing a collective identity. We analyze the historical roots of popular and elite expressions of race and national identity in an African context. Throughout the chapter, the authors intentionally assert their voices, through personal narratives as evidence-based inquiry toward a journey of self-discovery and self-awareness of their Black African Canadian identities: three diverse perspectives encompassing continental, first-­ generation diasporic Canadian views. Their individual histories of separation from the continent through/by means of either intentional migration or because of the European slave trade, they find commonalities in both their displacement and more powerfully in their desire to be deeply connected to their African identity beyond the physical land, the continent of Africa. In this work, authors discuss their identities guided by the following questions. Who am I? Where is home? How do others see you? Who is the other? How do you connect to home? These series of questions help the authors uniquely locate themselves, sharing a snapshot of their lived experiences highlighting themes of resistance and reparations as a process of reclamation of the Self to the Whole. The interconnected relationship between the Self and its place in a broader ecosystem, the Whole, is central to the power of a collective identity. We explore the notion of African Resistance, as we elucidate the need to reject prior definitions of both race and nation—they are not universal nor are they foolproof—in favor of plural African identities, demonstrated in our commonality of otherness, referencing our in-between identities and location within a diverse identity. We assert that recentering the Self by returning to traditional knowledge acts as a form of inner reparations that then allows us to fully participate in the collective identity. Fundamental to the authors’ understanding of the collective identity is the “We-Identity,” as coined by Kaylynn Sullivan Two Trees. The We-Identity is a space that allows for transformation (Sullivan, 2007, p. 37), “[…] when I become self-aware, I can surrender, and when I surrender that is the transformation to I that becomes We” (Sullivan, 2007, p. 36). We conclude with a deep inquisition of embracing the “Africa” that lies within to achieve liberation, awaken our spirit, and empower generations to come.

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Resistance: Survival Mechanism Resistance is a hackneyed usage every colonized Indigenous group tenaciously grapples with as both a magic wand of revival and panacea of hope and restoration. Africa and Africans in Diaspora are not exceptions. The world’s richest continent has been so brutalized, raped, and ravished by the three invading phases (Arab, Western, and presently, Indo/Chinese) of colonization that she is almost bereft of all heritages. Economically, socio-culturally, and politically the continent still suffers from the unending wounds of neocolonial brutalities. Resistance becomes the bastion of hope for troubling the colonial subjugations and its pervasiveness to reinvent the moribund African Indigenous cultures and her cultural identities and reinstate her future assertiveness in the comity of nations. The legacy of colonialism has created tall social constructs to cast shadows of the malicious misrepresentation of the history of Africa by centering Eurocentric perspectives of underdevelopment and inferiority. Foucault defines the purpose of the Panopticon as a structure for “creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it” (Foucault, 1977). From educational systems to the media we consume, through knowledge production, colonization has created a structure whereby Black people and those of African descent have become colonial reproducers; oftentimes projecting onto ourselves the same expressions of power they experience (Foucault, 1977). Individuals are shaped and created by power, as is their narrative of truth. As Africans living in a neocolonial society, we have been conditioned through overt and covert disciplinary measures to become more docile. By controlling our narratives and environment, colonization and eurocentrism have reduced our individual and collective power. Melanie: Non-black people would choose to only see the melanin in my skin, looked at like a disposable object, nameless and just Black. Itched in my memory was when I was in grade three, I was pulled out of class by someone else’s parent, who was scolding me for teasing her daughter, who I did not know and was in the other class. It turned out she mistook me for another Black girl, I tried to tell her several times but to her the colour of my skin made me guilty. I remember feeling betrayed by my teacher for allowing this parent to pull me out of class, by the parent that just seemed to see my Blackness and by the student that gave her mother the wrong information. This incident amongst others confirmed the deep roots of anti-Black racism in Canada and the correlation to the European slave trade to “underdeveloped Africa” to fulfill the colonial mission of

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s­ubjugation for capitalist gains (Rodeny, 1981). The colonial legacy has enforced suspicion and disregard for the Black community through stereotypes of violence, crime, poverty and noneducation connected to Blackness. It would become clearer of my parents’ sacrifice to live where we did, push for education, and urge to abide by the law. They did everything to teach us to fight against the racial stereotypes of the Black community. I have recognized the contention to thrive to be the model minority; the Black family that was the anomaly, this reveals the tenets of internalized oppression. Learning to hide your “Blackness” to avoid trouble or to succeed in a society that only sees your Blackness as the pigment of your skin and as a deficit is self-mutilation. Striving for whiteness is exhaustingly impossible and similarly so is striving for a very superficial “Blackness.” Akello: At a very young age, I knew the differences that existed between the various religious groups and how it caused divisions in society. This knowledge made me feel reserved around other people who are not of the same religion or ethnic group like me. School was the place where I was taught to conform to western ideology and knowledges over African Indigenous knowledge. The educational system shaped social norms, privileging western knowledge while never questioning those in positions of authority and power. The colonizing tools of religion and education rooted in patriarchy were used to stifle my Acholi values to the point of complete distortion. I was encouraged, for instance, to speak English at school and at home since becoming “successful” in life can only be achieved through western “formal” Education where English is the medium of instruction. Another example is the ostracization I have experienced being a woman pursing higher education. It was both at home and in school that I was taught and made to believe that boys were more important to have in the family than girls and that girls were to be quiet and submissive, and again that girls shouldn’t stay long in school; they should get married as early as possible. When I was pursuing my master’s degree, most boys would insult me and say I am going to be barren and unable to give birth to children as I will be old by the time I finish school, saying I’ll become like the common type of chicken kept that is called “off layers” after completing my Master’s. There are two major conflicting expectations that are directed towards my colonized personality or body: The first being from my colonized indigenize community (Acholi), who expect me to be an embodiment of western culture and ways of life in the way I eat, speak, dress, and relate with other people in my village. This expectation raises a concern in my struggle to decolonize because I am also beginning to question the root of my community’s expectations. The second expectation is rather a backlash and push off from the colonizer (in the west) who feels that I am not westernized enough to represent their cultural heritage in the way I relate with people in terms of my language, the way I eat, dress, and in the manner, I interact with people. These expectations also create

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the ambivalence of choice since I am left to conform to the dominant European culture that I am also ill-equipped. Nadine: Until recently, I had never thought to examine my African ancestry as an Egyptian or to question the Eurocentric version of ancient Egyptian history as taught in school curricula. Prevalent Eurocentric views of what it means to be Egyptian is not unique to my circumstances as an Egyptian living abroad; Eurocentricity dominates Egyptian belief systems today. Despite our African and Negroid origin, Blackness is overtly discouraged and repressed in Egypt. Currently in Egypt, for example, there is a tendency to associate fairness of skin and “whiteness” with being upper class marginalizing those with darker complexions in Southern Egypt. Despite the well-known detrimental effects, bleaching agents are highly sought after in beauty products as darker women compete to achieve fairness and become “beautiful.” This obsession with whiteness and drive to avoid Blackness is reproduced in our media, language, and social norms. Like many Egyptians, I have been blessed with a darker complexion and curly hair. Yet my childhood in Egypt, like many others’, was marked by bi-annual visits to the hair salon to have my hair permanently relaxed and by persistent demands to “avoid the sun.” I recall a younger me looking in the mirror and questioning her self-worth and difference to those around her.

According to Loomba (2001), quoted by Shahjaham (2005), “colonialism has reshaped the existing structures of human knowledge and no branch of learning has been left untouched by the colonial experience” (Shahjahan, 2006, p.  691). The intentional attempted erasure of Afrocentric knowledge is littered throughout our inherited account of the past by those whose intent to dominate resources by any means necessary. Willinsky (1999) reinforces this notion urging us to rethink what we have inherited through history, “…what has gone missing in the story of the past, but also about history that has remained all too present as a force in our lives…the past is not forgotten, but it is used to invest the present with meaning” (Willinsky, 1999, p. 245). Understanding that the representation of historical “facts” have been skewed to fulfill the colonial mission, forces us all, especially the people intended to be oppressed, people of African descent, to resist the historical consciousness, the “remembered past” (Gosselin & Livingstone, 2016, p. 7). Our initial act of resistance is to recognize the misrepresentation of historical accounts, the myths of colonization.

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Resisting Myths of Colonization: Recentering Historical Context Nadine: For as long as I can remember, my identity has always been based on my difference. Growing up in the UAE, my identity was based on what I was not: I may be an Arab, but as an Egyptian, I was not a Guelph Arab, nor would I ever be. In Egypt, I was a khaleejia (a Guelph Arab), an American, or simply ajnabya (a foreigner). In Canada, I was simply “not white”—either brown, light skin, or Black. Everywhere I went, there was a societal preoccupation with race and categorization. Through my journey in writing this chapter with my peers and reflecting on my experiences, I hope to better understand the forces driving homogenization. Why does inclusion in a nation, culture, or a religion require homogenization, can’t we simply belong to multiple identities? What does resistance look like in overcoming dichotomies? What does a world that allows for diverse integration without homogenization look like?

The imposition of colonial boundaries and capitalism-driven economic systems pushed ethnic communities into adopting a new collective national identity, pushing them into underdevelopment. The greatest accomplishment of colonization was in stratifying and dividing the African nation, creating tensions between our similarities and our differences. Europeans have used “race,” history, and culture to delegitimize Africans of their basic human rights and justify the legacy of White supremacy (Singh, 2004). Mayhap “Race” was the European weapon used as part of their colonial project to legitimize injustices (Singh, 2004). Thus, it is important to recognize that “race” is both a social and political construct. It is neither fixed nor is it immutable, it can’t be measured, nor can it be quantified. Melanie: As a mixed-race woman of colour, I often do not mention the various racial identities that make up who I am, I simply say I am Black. I have had to unpack the concept of my Blackness, its intersection with the pride I feel towards my nationality yet the separateness that looms towards my African identity. Born on the small Caribbean island of Trinidad, my immediate family immigrated to Canada when I was a toddler. We spent many years as landed immigrants in this country. I would be reminded of this fact when travelling, completing forms or if someone asked, “Are you Canadian?”. I was always content to answer, “No, I am Trini.” The few times I visited my homeland or when family came to visit Canada, we would be referred to as “the Canadians.” I would ask myself, If I am not Trinidadian or Canadian, what am I? I could only resolve that I was fully neither but in part both. Similarly, being mixed

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race, growing up, other Black children would tell me I wasn’t Black enough because of the texture of my hair, the shade of my skin and the fact that my mother was a non-black mixed-race woman. Akello: My family thinks I am lucky living the “American dream.” This brings questions that nudge me to re-appraise my dual identity within the context of African ecological knowledge base. How do others—from your tribe— look at you now that you live away? Yet I am not altogether free, as I also face criticisms from my close friends for engaging the Indigenous practices, like always wearing the colourful African long dresses and tying my hair as opposed to wearing Canadian suits and attires that are foreign to them in the village when I visit. This is because my community back in Africa expects me to behave and act like the Europeans, celebrate, and conform to the North American ways of doing things, dress in non-African ways, and eat foreign foods. They are automatically trying to say that they have expectations on the colonized and the same from the colonized people to lay expectations on themselves.

From slavery to regulating trade to building settlements, European colonization and imperialism allowed for the assertion of political, social, and cultural dominance over the African continent (Quijano, 2007). In the fifteenth century, Europe’s economic technology, mass-production, and large-scale demands started pushing Africans into abandoning the way of smelting iron and forgetting the way of their forefathers and their capacity to build and grow (Rodney, 1981). Africans were enslaved by the Europeans “so that their labour power could be exploited” and used to sustain a White capitalist class (p. 103). Slave buyers’ preference for able-­ bodied Africans between the ages of 15 and 35, with a strong preference for those in their early 20s, meant fewer African babies and a lower population size. The slave-trade industry became so integral to the European economy that by the seventeenth century, it overvalued the gold-trading industry. As slave-trading became more profitable than goldmining, Africans who recruited captives for the Europeans started enslaving their own. As resources were redirected to the slave trade, and the number of slave hunters and warriors increased, African agriculture suffered and with it the African connection to the land (Rodney, 1981). Upon discovering the resemblance between Native Egyptians and Black slaves of the French Empire by the likes of Count Voluney and Napolean, Europeans worried they would no longer be able to sustain the myth of African inferiority (Diop & Cook, 1989). The grandiose of Egyptian civilization threatened the servile social structure of their nation. Since the Bible does not distinguish between Blacks and Whites, colonizers

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manipulated the interpretations of Noah’s curse on Ham and his descendants to justify Black slavery and ease their Christian conscience (Diop & Cook, 1989). Now faced with the truth—that the supposedly accursed Black race can create the splendors of ancient Egyptian civilization—a new story was needed to sustain the politics of slavery. Consequently, the biblical narrative of Noah’s curse on Ham and his descendants was changed and manipulated to justify Black slavery and ease Christian conscience. Of Ham’s two sons, it was only Canaan the father of “the Black branch” that was cursed. The Egyptians were descendants of Mizraim, Ham’s other son, who fathered the “Caucasoid branch,” immune from the curse (Diop & Cook, 1989). Since then, historians, archeologists, and Egyptologists alike have worked to deny Africans and Blacks credit for their accomplishments. Ancient Egypt and the continent of Africa were victims of cultural genocide (Diop & Cook, 1989). From the creation of pseudoscientific criteria to the defacing of inscriptions, information was manipulated to deny Ancient Egyptians their Negroid origin (Diop & Cook, 1989), so much so that modern Egyptians today maintain their political and cultural distance from the rest of Africa (Mazrui, 1982). To this day historians selectively ignore evidence of Black contributions to ancient Egyptian civilizations: the sphynx is a statue of the Black pharaoh Khafre, the pyramids were built on the reign of the African King Khufu, the Egyptian deities Seth and Amon were of African origin (Diop & Cook, 1989). The rejection of African heritage by European philosophers, anthropologists, and historians from the likes of David Hume, George Hegel, and Seligman are based on prejudice and a shallow understanding of “Philosophy.” The perpetration of Blacks being “naturally inferior to the White” not only meant the separation of Ancient Egyptian heritage from that of Africa, but also meant the dismissal of African cosmology and philosophy that centers metaphysics of unifying cosmic energy that is the Life Force in all that exists, “human beings, animals, plants, minerals, and objects, as well as events” (Mazama, 2002, p. 219). The use of western education as a colonizing tool is very present to this day as curricula selectively ignore African history or manipulate the narrative in favor of one that promotes Eurocentric domination. Nadine: As an African, I could not help but contrast Diop’s Egypt with our knowledge of today’s Egypt and mourn the loss of a lost rich civilization. I was most intrigued by the practice of circumcision, practiced in today’s rural Egypt.

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In the past, circumcision was driven by a belief in androgyny; as humans are born of a single sex, circumcision would move one towards a specific sex. It was also seen as repayment of a debt to god, and a guard against evil forces. Nevertheless, today, female circumcision is used as a tool to inflict patriarchal control over women, their sexualities, and their bodies. I was similarly very surprised to learn of the unique privilege ancient Egyptians with Black skin possessed and were rewarded. To serve the Gods in the cult of god Min, or to become the Priestess of Amon you had to be a citizen of a Black complexion. I mourn the loss of Diop’s Egyptian Civilization and its celebration of its African heritage. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about today’s Egypt, where anti-­ Black racism is prevalent. Culturally distinct native populations like Black Nubian communities have been silenced and abused, Black Egyptian nationals from south regions like the City of Aswan are looked down upon and discriminated against. Egypt’s Africanness and Blackness is a concept seldom discussed with many Egyptians identifying themselves as “non-Caucasian white.” “We are Arab!” “We are middle Eastern!” But only during the African World Cup or during conversations about Mohamed Salah do we become “Africans.” Akello: I am still feeling a strong need to resist discrimination in my life in various areas and even at a family level as a girl child. It is funny that even after moving away to the so-called developed world where they say equality between men and women exist, I felt immense racial discrimination that is more complicated than what I ever imagined in my entire life. Blackness is equated to all kinds of negativity, such as ignorance, disgrace, stupidity, laziness, rudeness, poverty, insecurity, crime. I came to this country thinking I am an equal like every human being, but little did I know that being Black in north America means a lot more than what I grew up knowing in Africa in terms of being treated with dignity irrespective of what you have or how you look, the dignity of the human person is always celebrated. I constantly struggle to wriggle myself out of the cultural whirlpool, confusion, and emotional dissonance created by the tensions between my original African Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge base as imbued in African education and spirituality on one hand, and education based on Western colonial philosophies on the other. These two unequally yoked oxen are equally two identities—one in which I know and define myself—and the other in which I am defined by some strangers’ stereotypically derogatory gaze from a distance.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we work collectively to continue the Pan-African vision of scholars and leaders that include the former Egyptian president Gamal Abd El-Nasser, the former Ethiopian Emperor Haille Sellasie, and the prominent scholar Cheikh Anta Diop to

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restore African identity. “As soon as a race has created a civilization, there can be no more possibility of it being Black” (Diop & Cook, 1989, p. 133). In The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese historian, physicist, and anthropologist, presents various arguments in support of an Egyptian Negroid origin. Diop identifies the limited and erroneous anthropological criteria used to minimize Negroid classifications of Egyptians while attempting to maximize and equate the non-Negroid presence to the White race. This Negroid criterion used skull and facial indices, nasal index, skin color, and hair texture. Consequently, these indices resulted in Egyptians being misclassified as, “Whites with red skin or Whites with Black skin.” Diop quotes an excerpt from eighth grade textbook: “A Black is distinguished less by the color of his skin (for there are Whites with black skin than by his features: thick lips, flat nose, etc.” (Diop & Cook, 1989, p. 133)

Any data that denies the emphatic reality that Ancient Egyptians were not Black is scientifically inaccurate. The great civilization of Egypt known for its architecture, governance, religion, medicine, and hieroglyphs was a Black African society. Supporting arguments for Black African origins in ancient Egypt include the presence of totemism; the belief system in which humans have a sacred relationship with a spirit-being, an animal, or a plant; the cosmogenic practice of circumcision practiced across Africa including Bantu and Dogon people; evidence of matriarchy; ritualistic conception of kings; shared hierarchical social organization with other African nations; and similarities between the Egyptian Language and Wolof—the West African language (Diop & Cook, 1989).

Resistance of Internalized Colonization We have all been deeply infected by the tenets of colonization, even the internal perception of self can be distorted. “Colonialism,” as noted by Fanon (1963), “by a kind of perverted logic…turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it” (Shahjahan, 2006, p. 210). The distortion of the past automates the infliction of internal distortion intended to destroy the strength of oppressed people. Internal oppression must be actively resisted and critically analyzed as the perusal of the colonial mission, a perusal of Western ideologies, a perusal

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of whiteness. Through a snapshot of western historical accounts by “qualified” professionals, we witness the inadvertent reinforcement of a desolate African culture and people. Although littered with misrepresentation, these Western knowledges influence societal norms and thus affects individual perceptions. Melanie: The history I learned and knew to be fact was more than an embellishment of truth, it was the well-calculated erasure of African history. As I unraveled the Eurocentric web of misrepresentation, I could not help but feel a sense of deep sadness knowing that I may have lost a piece of my history that I could never recover. I remember picturing the accounts of history like the childhood game of “broken telephone”; the true message would start with one person and then whispered in the ear of the next person until it reached the very last person. From person to person the message would ultimately lose the original and true message and without the first person, the message would be lost forever. I was fearful that the African truths of history were lost forever. I shared this in Dr. Wane’s Decolonial Education class discussion. Dr. Ilmi reminded us even if something is lost it does not negate its existence, it simply has to be found again. (Ilmi, 2021) This sparked curiosity to find the history I was not told. Through the learning of African Philosophies course, I was able to both deconstruct my internalized Western ideologies and address internal oppression by simultaneously constructing my knowledge of African history by Black scholars (Hurtado, 2003, pp. 217–2). I would quickly learn about Africa’s influence through trade around the world. Today, there are still remnants of African beyond the continent through music, language, spiritual/ritual and economic practices. Sertima affirms the Westerns African influence on South American as an example of Africa as a place of origin. (Sertima, 2003)

We acknowledge the insistent structural violence utilized to destabilize the continent and people of African descent. As a protective measure, we discuss the instinctive role resistance plays to deconstruct the coercive effects of Eurocentrism while reconstructing frameworks “to better meet the needs of those left out of the system” (Hossein, 2020, p.  219). Afrocentricity is grounded in the lived experiences of Black people connected to the African reality through remembrance and honoring the ways of one’s African Ancestors, one begins to heal the self as an act of reparation.

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Reparations: Reconciling the Self as a Journey Back to One’s Centre “Each one of us possesses a centre that he/she had grown away from after birth…The center is both within and without. It is everywhere. But we must realize it exist, find it and be with it, for without it the centre we cannot tell who we are, where we come from, and where we are going…. One must go through a process of relearning, enforcement of these lessons, and the consolidation of new knowledge. This kind of education is nothing less than a return to one’s true self, this is, to the divine within us.” (Somé, 1994, p. 198), Indigenous Daggra Elder, Malidoma Somé

Recognizing resistance as a necessity for survival acknowledges it as a crucial act of preservation for people of color, specifically people of African descent. Resistance is a catalyst to confronting the deliberate fragmentation of African history, culture, and people through deep reparative work of the self. As Black feminist Audre Lorde affirms, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (Lorde, 2017, p. 97). Where does this act of warfare begin? It begins at a point of unsettling discomfort that can instigate action to change the false narrative (hooks, 2014). The deconstruction of Eurocentric misrepresentation initiates reconciliation to a liberated self. The quest to claim back the knowledge alleged to be lost allows a gentle emergence of histories buried deep within. Through the recollection of the ways of the past, awareness of the individual and collective identity and their interconnectedness becomes a form of reparations to people made victims to exploitative systems of domination. This is a pursuit to make amends for the injustices to the nation of Africa not merely as a landmass but also as generations of people of African descent and the sacred knowledge of the Ancestors. Melanie: Being mixed race, both Blackness and whiteness was never fully attainable without forcing myself to reject other parts of who I am. Instead, I found myself in this ‘in-between identity’, not fitting neatly into one category but occupying space in several, I found a space where I could belong. It is in this belonging, I start to realize that I too can be a part of African identities. It was no longer about the rigid categories that I do not fit in but connecting my in-­ between identity to the remnants of my cultural lineage in discovery of deeper knowledge of myself to actively resist the self-hate that develops from living in an

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anti-black society, heal from the constant otherness and see myself within/apart of collective identity. Nadine: A 9,000 km distance and 15 long years may be separating me from Egypt, but Egypt will always be within me as I am a part of her. As a migrant I found myself, twice over, situated within two spaces marked by differences in culture, language, values, and principles. Through my feelings of loneliness, unease, loss, and isolation, I became obsessed with the notion of homecoming. I struggled to find a balance between my past and present; I was convinced I would have to choose. As I entered this liminal space, my preoccupation with homecoming and relationships with the past only grew. At this threshold of identity, I found myself sacrificing and foregoing my own principles and beliefs to reconcile my feelings of displacement. The more I “belonged,” the more despondent I grew. I was lost, until my approach to “homecoming” changed. Homecoming became less about a palace and/or space and more of an imagined center where memories and traditions existed. In this, homecoming became possible and with it I found peace. Regardless of where I am today, spatially and/or temporally, I see myself as an extension of the Motherland; I may not be in Egypt, but Egypt is within me. Africa, to me is an imagined center to which I can return to physically, spiritually, or through my memories. Akello: Coming to Canada and experiencing the racial injustice, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison to my Indigenous African understandings of humanity. I was taught that all people are to be treated with dignity regardless of their skin, color, social, economic, and political differences. Across the continent there is a reverence for foreigners, they are treated with immense love, respect and a high sense of inclusivity. Thinking about these differences would cause me great pain. I asked myself, why are we so loving and welcoming at all costs? This creates bitterness and deep resentment that I do not want to hold which causes anxiety. But it comes back to one message of love I was taught by my father, “It does not matter what the world says to you, always do the right thing”. I desire reparations for myself, my people, and my continent. But where do we start? How do I let go of this bitterness and anxiety which is ultimately harming me? The central theme in this topic is resistance, reparation and resurgence and its impact on Black people’s lives.

This idea of rediscovering the vital interconnectedness of one’s center to the whole is situated in the “emancipatory movement” of Afrocentricity and the “principle of unity of being” an ontological perspective rooted in African cosmology. Mazama references Asante’s assertion of Afrocentricity as “the measure of our lives” “that must inform our approach to everything” (Mazama, pp. 218–219). Accordingly, when Afrocentric principles and cosmology are incorporated in the lives and beliefs of people of African

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descent, an act of remembrance is evoked allowing the true self to be revitalized. Based on African cosmology, the remembrance and honoring of one’s Ancestors serves as a protection and guidance to navigate life. The principle of Sankofa honors the learnings of the past and continues the work of “our departed leaders who wisely and courageously served our people while on earth” and “will continue their service once they take up residence in the spiritual realm” (Hotep, 2010, pp. 4–5). Remembering the sacrifices and suffering of our Ancestors provides protection and guidance tailored to fulfilling one’s individual and collective purpose. Through the remnants of one’s Ancestors and Indigenous African knowledge, a reflection of the self becomes recognizable, healing from effects of fragmentation.

Resurgence of African Identities Engaging in the process of internal restoration of self-identity initiates the necessary healing, “You are aware of yourself both as detail and as a piece of the Whole” (Sullivan, 2007, p. 18), both becoming ‘Whole and being a part of the Whole’. For people of African descent, we must reassert Indigenous African knowledges in the foundation of understanding our collective identity. We must value our origins by considering what has been left untouched by the tools of colonization (Wane et al., 2019). By centering the past, the origins of knowledges, we can identify the value of what remains, the spirit. In Wane’s chapter in Decolonizing the Spirit in Education and Beyond, she shares: Cabral (1974) emphasized the importance of returning to the source-that is, going back to re-educate yourself in terms of your authentic self-your knowledge…Mother Africa holds the hidden secrets. In order for us as occupants of the planet to heal, and employ spirituality as a decolonizing tool, we need to open “and authentic” ourselves. We need to develop certain skills such as deep listening to our inner self so as to have access to the talents and mental map that everyone is born with and from which most of us do not know it exists and we just need to retrieve it. Dr. Njoki Wane (Wane et al., 2019, p. 19)

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The Retrieval of our Knowledges Indigenous Africans’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) comprise the epistemological and pragmatic understanding that the peoples share with their physical environment and cosmos over centuries. It is balanced on African peoples’ Indigenous education and worldviews (Belanger, 2018). The goal of engaging TEK in this work is to inspire authorities and institutions of learning to challenge the predominant Eurocentric views, constructs, and theorizations that hitherto have denigrated Indigenous African Ways of Knowing, and therefore have continued to cripple meaningful and environmentally relevant socio-economic development in the continent. Deconstructing the status quo in the existing basic education policies and praxis that have continued to occlude African peoples’ epistemological and socio-cultural bases for knowledge production and dissemination would foreground knowledge production on culturally relevant principles that would form a sound groundwork for the continent’s ecologically viable socio-economic development. Colonization and neocolonial grips on the life and cultures of Indigenous peoples also require some measure of resistance and agency that would be demonstrated by the Indigenous peoples to free their cultural heritage from the brink of extinction. This may require high-level activism. The recognition that the world is urgently turning into a densely populated global village impels us to propose a multi-world approach to understanding and finding solutions to global socio-cultural and politicoeconomic problems that will provide the closest panacea to benefit the multi-cultural societies and the cultural pot-pouri that emerges. This goes with the argument that the various continents of the world share a collection of diverse Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. It will remain unfair to continue to propagate and essentialize Western ideological approach to world socio-political and ecological problems without recourse to the Indigenous ecological contents especially when dealing with matters that affect Native Communities (Belanger, 2018). Akello: I resist foreign cultural domination and practice what I know about myself by going back to Africa as often as possible to replenish myself and my spirit, by trying to live amongst people who love unconditionally, who have the same mindset, tolerance, and patience. I hope by my yearly pilgrimage to Africa to garner the strength to resist and disrupt the falsehood around blackness. On each of my trips, the realization of the value of Indigenous African Ways of

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Knowing creates in me a resurgence of identity. To resist the stress that I constantly experience, I travel to Africa every year. I credit my survival and sanity to the efforts I make to travel back to the continent every July and August to have a sound mind by breaking away from the negativity that surrounds me in a North American setting. For example this Summer, not being able to go back home, has made me feel like I lost part of my body. I am exhausted and constantly tired because I am disconnected from the homeland. When I am home, I exercise a lot of caution to resist colonial tendencies by eating my traditional dishes, celebrating my own cultural activities including dances, songs, and other ceremonies with my family members. I engage in other cultural ways of knowing and do things in conformity with my own traditional beliefs. I chose to make these trips a sustained yearly experience because of the immense cultural expositions I regularly can experience. I also travel with my Canadian-born son, who, having come of age, not only learns more of his foundational culture but also is able to express himself in the Indigenous language of the Acholi. This equips my son with the confidence found in being situated in one’s cultural identity but also the enabling wisdom to attend to current global issues from a multi-world perspective instead of the parochial colonialist approach. Nadine: For as long as I could remember, I have always made it a point to avoid conversations about race and/or ethnicity. Why—because I didn’t see the point in challenging how I was racialized. I failed to recognize the dangers of accepting dichotomous societal rules. In my silence against being racially categorized based on my facial features—curls, wheat-skin (as we call it in Egypt), citizenship, and/or language, I was abiding by and enforcing illogical, rigid, discriminatory forces that disregard the intersectionality of humans. This would have continued had it not been for Dr. Njoki Wane and my classmates in African classics: Decolonial thought in Education. My discomfort and disappointment in realizing how little I knew of my own African history were soon replaced with hope and solidarity. While our discussions on post-­ colonialism allowed us to mourn our losses, Dr. Wanes’ exemplary insistence on spiritual resistance and collective resurgence allowed us to move constructively towards personal decolonization. In our mourning we were moving towards healing. This space has marked the start of a long and arduous transformative journey towards finding inner peace. While I cannot control the past and those around me, I can control myself and my own belief systems, so I no longer reproduce the same forces of oppression. Melanie: In what I thought to be a simple hobby of gardening, I have developed a relationship with the land. It is only through my learning and unlearning of colonial practices, I started recognizing my gardening’s connection to my Ancestor’s understanding and relationship to the land. I share an excerpt from Farming While Black:

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“In African cosmology, we believe that there is no separation between the sacred and the everyday…Each spring, before breaking ground with the hoe or planting the first seed, we ask permission from the Spirit of the Land and make offerings of gratitude. Each fall we celebrate the yam festival to give thanks for the harvest and spirit to refortify ourselves with the strength of our ancestors. In between these bookends of the season, we maintain an intimate connection with Divine through singing and dancing in the fields, making food and drink offerings, and asking permission before new enterprises. We are guests and stewards on this Earth, not owners, and need to behave as such.” (Penniman, 2018, p. 53) Practicing the wisdom of my Ancestors, I noticed my plants became healthier and I developed a greater appreciation for nature. I became aware of the subtle reality of the interconnected nature between all living things. Akello: I am a Black Acholi lady from a British colonized East African country, tracing my roots all the way back to Bahr el Ghazel, South Sudan, and born within a Roman Catholic Family, and as a Social Justice Education student, it is important to reflect on who I am as an individual. Class readings, discussions, and lectures have enabled me to reflect on my social location (Virginia Stead, ed, 2015, p. ) as a Black African immigrant woman. I am Me and We, a child of Mother Africa. Melanie: I am a woman of many colors and identities, yet I am one. I am whole because I acknowledge the differences of each part that completes me. I am me and We, a child of Mother Africa. Nadine: I wish to use this space to reclaim my identity. I am a woman, I am a Muslim, I am an Arab, I am an African, I am a Middle Eastern, I am an Egyptian, I am an American, I am a Canadian, and I am a person of color. I am Me and We, a child of Mother Africa. Our voice: We started this writing journey not knowing how it would end. Yet, here we are, three African women with completely distinct cultures, languages, and traditions. Despite our differences, we are united in our shared Blackness and attachment to Africa as the homeland. In our conversations about resistance, discussion on our visions for reparations, and narration of our experiences against systemic forces of violence—racism, heteropatriarchy, and colonization, we found our self-beginning question: Is Spiritual Pan-­ Africanism the solution? Can the resurgence of African identities be achieved through spiritual solidarity between peoples of the African continent, those with African ancestry, and those of the Black Diaspora in the Caribbean and American continents? Through spiritual integration of our African identities and achieving the We, not only do we liberate ourselves from the leashes of colonization, but also reach peace within ourselves. This is not to dismiss the importance of Pan-Africanism as a movement for greater political and economic integration. But to prioritize spiritual integration of self-defined identities to

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transcend socially and politically constructed borders. We started as three individuals but in discovering the Africa that lies within, we became one. This process did not take place overnight, it took time. Time for us to trust one another, understand one another, reflect on our belief, and value systems, and time for sisterhood and friendship to develop.

Conclusion Our impetus for writing this chapter is an attempt to disrupt the idea of a monolithic African identity. Using our personal narratives and individual experiences we embrace the multiplicity of our identities within the African Canadian diaspora. This is our collective entry point to resist the insidious effects of otherness and fragmentation. Through our differences, we explore the role of resistance as a survival mechanism, an act of preservation that protects the remnants of one’s lineage and identity. Reclaiming that identity requires inner healing allowing one’s awareness of the importance of an identity that reflects you and your lineage. Reparation of the self is an entry point to a collective identity: the Whole. We utilize the collective Indigenous African identity as a framework to bring forth the commonality of our identities as Black women. The recentering of African Indigenous knowledges re-establishes our innate ability to connect with the Life Force/Source in the form of spirituality free from the contamination of colonial domination and oppression. It is our belief that all people, not just people of African descent, have an innate ability and desire to connect to the unifying Life Force/Source that reconciles the self to the Other and nature (Wane, 2011, p 168). We suggest that all of humanity can be healed from collective amnesia by replacing the colonial consciousness with spirituality rootedness in Indigenous knowledges, the first examples of relationship with the Divine/Life Force. Through “reflective remembrance” the memories and wisdom of the Ancestors guide us to restore balance between knowledges of the past and present (Wane, 2011, p. 163), returning to the “Teachings we have received from our elders as well from the cosmos and the Earth itself” (Sullivan, 2018, p.  198). Developing a relationship with the land/Earth can be seen as an entry point to evoke the wisdom of the Ancestors and Indigenous knowledges. According to Sullivan and Pinto, “The enactment of deep practice and deep relationship are radical reciprocity…we are aware of ripples of impact from all interactions with any other being and with the whole of nature” (Sullivan, 2018, p. 206).

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References Belanger, Y. (2018). Ways of knowing: An introduction to native studies in Canada (3rd ed.). University of Lethbridge. Cabral, A. (1974). Return to the Source. NYU Press. Diop, C. A., & Cook, M. (1989). The African origin of civilization: Myth or reality (Later Printing ed.). Lawrence Hill Books. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Grove Press. Foucault, M. 1926–1984. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Pantheon Books. Gosselin, V., & Livingstone, P. (2016). Introduction: Perspective on museums and historical consciousness in Canada (pp. 7–8). Incomplete. Hooks, b. (2014). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics (p.  229). Routledge. Hossein, C. (2020). Mutual aid and physical distancing are not new for marginalized and Black communities in the Americas (Links to an external site.). HistPhil, March 24. Hotep, U. (2010). African centered leadership-followership: Foundational Principles, precepts, and essential practices (pp. 5–7). Incomplete. Hurtado, A. (2003). Theory in the flesh: Toward an endarkened epistemology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 215–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839032000060617 Ilmi, M. S. (2021). The Legitimacy of Bougainville Secession from Papua New Guinea. Jurnal Sentris, 2(1), 59–72. Lorde, A. (2017). A burst of light: And other essays (p.  97). Courier Dover Publications. Mazama, M.  A. (2002). Afrocentricity and African spirituality. Journal of Black Studies, 33(2), 219–223. Mazrui, A. A. (1982). Africa between nationalism and nationhood: A political survey. Journal of Black Studies, 13(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 002193478201300103 Penniman, L. (2018). Farming while black: Soul fire farm’s practical guide to liberation on the land. Chelsea Green Publishing. Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353 Rodney, W. (1981). How Europe underdeveloped Africa (Revised ed.). Howard University Press. Sertima, V. I. (2003). They came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America (Journal of African Civilizations) (Reprint ed.). Random House Trade Paperbacks. Shahjahan, R. (2006). Spirituality in the academy: Reclaiming from the margins and Evoking a Transformative way of knowing the world. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(6).

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Singh, S. (2004). Resistance, essentialism, and empowerment in black nationalist discourse in the African Diaspora: A comparison of the back to Africa, black power, and rastafari movements. Journal of African American Studies, 8(2), 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-­004-­1011-­3 Somé, M. (1994). Of water and spirit: Ritual, magic, and initiation in the life of an African shaman (p. 198). Tarcher/Putnam. Sullivan, K. (2007). Earthtime, our true nature. Incomplete. Sullivan, N. (2018). International clinical volunteering in Tanzania: A postcolonial analysis of a Global Health business. Global Public Health, 13(3), 310–324. Wane, N. (2011). Reclaiming our spirituality: Pedagogical tool for feminism and activism. Canadian Woman Studies, 29(1–2). Wane, N. et  al. (eds.). (2019). Decolonizing the spirit in education and beyond: Resistance and solidarity (Spirituality, Religion, and Education). (1st ed. 2019 ed., pp. 9–20). Palgrave Macmillan. Willinsky, J. (1999). Curriculum, after culture, race, nation. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 20(1), 89–112.

CHAPTER 11

Cultural Genocide: The Miseducation of the African Child Wairimu Njoroge

No More Lies About Africa “Once upon a time in Africa, We paid no taxes, There was no crime, There was no police, There was no inflation, There was no unemployment, Men did not beat or divorce their wives. Then the White man came to improve things!” (Chief Nangoli Musamaali, 2001, p. 18-pictured below).

W. Njoroge (*) University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_11

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Introduction What is Culture? “[Culture is] … the living process that gives people patterns to understand and/or interpret reality and a design for living their lives” (Nobles, 1985, p. 102). [It] is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of history, by the positive or negative influence which it exerts on the evolution of relationships between [woman/] man and [her/] his environment, among [women/] men or groups of [women/] men within a society, as well as among different societies. (Cabral, 1974, n.p)

Culture is the process that regulates all of a people’s thoughts, behaviors, interactions, and their commitments. Everything—from male-female relations, child-rearing, one’s relationship with the natural world, the conception of and relationship with the divine to styles of dress and forms of entertainment—is regulated by the culture of a people. Essentially, then, the culture of a people is what makes them who they are—collectively and individually. It is the fundamental value-system that guides, directs and motivates your thought and behavioral patterns. (Kambon, personal communication, April 20, 2019)

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Simply put, a “culture is essentially the society’s composite answer to the varied problems of life” (Biko, 1987, n.d.). Therefore, culture is NOT and hence should not be conflated with peculiar expressions of non-Eurasian’s ways of being or doing things, as often marked with “exotic”: dances, attires, food, art, and language, among others. So, what is Cultural Genocide? “Cultural genocide is the deliberate and systematic annihilation of a people’s culture by another group of people. Cultural genocide’s weapons of choice are physical terror and violence, psychological torture, and seduction. Indeed, cultural genocide always entails the negation of the worth of the culture to be suppressed, and it often seeks to enlist the acquiescence and active cooperation of those whose culture is to be destroyed (Asante & Mazama, 2005). This is done primarily through intense propaganda and bribery, making cultural genocide at times quite subtle and all the more effective” (Asante & Mazama, 2005, p. 209). As far as I (within the we) is concerned as a Pan Africanist(s), cultural genocide denotes White supremacy—“the pervasive myth of European absolute, God-granted cultural superiority and consequent burden to civilize the world” (Asante & Mazama, 2005, p. 209). This means that the destruction of African culture, an inferior cultural form “was to be undertaken with ardor, with a major conversion to European culture as the expected and desired outcome” (Asante & Mazama, 2005, p. 209). As often comprehended, chattel slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism are the main systems by which the White-supremacist ideology of cultural superiority that births cultural genocide was and continues to be implemented. However, in honor of my/our formerly enslaved (and now free in the spirit world) African ancestors’ ever-present human dignity, despite their and our continued dehumanization, and in accordance with our African cosmogony, I (within the we) will speak of the above systems of cultural genocide as the “continuum socio-historic processes of slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism” (Morodenibig, 2009a). This is because, in actuality, we were never slaves, rather enslaved. And most importantly, since time does not rest, it would be what I like to call “ancestral treason” for me to perpetuate the West’s obsession with the compartmentalization of time, by reiterating their agenda of forgetfulness aimed at convincing us African people that what happened yesterday isn’t present today. For as I shall discuss, I/we are our ancestors returned, hence their pain is equally ours, which may explain the mirror image of their oppressions to ours; lived through across varied historical timelines (The Earth Center, n.d.).

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Why Cultural Genocide? To the wise words of our elder Chinua Achebe (2013), until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. This African proverb illuminates why African history has often been written from the very White-supremacist gaze. Consequently, our subjugated knowledge as the most credible witnesses and hence the real experts on the subject matter has always been overlooked (Coetzee, 2009; Holmes et al., 2006). This is no coincidence, for it’s about power—“the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person”, as eloquently described by Chimamanda Adichie (2020) in her work on “The Danger of a Single Story”. Therefore, as a Pan Africanist(s), I (within the we) am not interested in re-storying the false story. Rather, in authoring the real story— centering the African narrative on a continuous resistance, so to expose the problem of whiteness and its historical and ongoing “psychopathic racial personality” on our collective African humanness (Wright, 1985).

Locating Self The only thing that [I within the] we can write about with authority is ourselves. (Absolon & Willett, 2005, p. 97)

It has been said that sometimes you have to leave home to discover home for the first time! I Wairimu Njoroge arrive to this topic as an indigenous “continental” African woman, displaced to Canada as a consequence of the push and pulls of colonialism, global neoliberalism to be specific. I am a social worker by profession and a therapist/psychotherapist by practice. By virtue of my area of specialty, “I am habitually headed into witnessing and reacting therapeutically” to our African collective pains (Njoroge, 2023, p. 23). This is to support us in “better managing” our “paradoxical individual experiences of distress, despite the well-known yet under-documented, collective, historical, and intergenerational histories of unrelenting anti-African” (often languaged as Anti-Black racism) globalized system of dehumanization (Njoroge, 2023, p.  23). As the youngest child of my beloved late and ever-existing mother Wangũi, who lived through colonial vehemence—an innocent African girl then—I still can’t understand why it is seldom acknowledged in my profession and practice that I too I am a product of anti-African violence and its deeply entrenched White-supremacist trends. It is not a surprise then that for I as an African therapist/psychotherapist, my experiences in their White spaces

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still continue to be presumed to be equal to their own. Thereby, often met with subhuman work expectations that I would from a distance, and concurrently, witness myself in my African descendant client’s pain, in a sector where we are overrepresented in distress. Consequently, while being fully aware within my being of how we become a nation of people in pain (Black African nation), the mental health sector’s focus on what Dr. Joyce DeGruy (2014, n.d.) calls “adaptive survival behaviors” moves the gaze away from the White supremacists’ diseased psychopathic personality selves to us, its very victim (Wright, 1985). I contend that this is not a coincidence, rather a colonial project intended to legitimize mental health–related violence upon us now, just like then. This is often masked behind universality of mental health experiences, and since it is de-historicized and hence decontextualized, it is no surprise that we are often misdiagnosed and consequently mis-treated (DeGruy, 2014). Part of the seductions of colonialism is the reverence for western knowledges and hence their systems of miseducation. So, like my sisters and brothers from across the continent before me, I sought to pursue my PhD in SJE at the OISE in Canada in 2019, for two main intersecting and interlocking reasons (Crenshaw, 1991). Firstly, the psychic benefits stated above, as a consequence of internalized sense of inferiority of African ancestral knowledges, wisdom, and its educational systems. Secondly, for the undeniable resultant socio-political and economic material consequences that unjustifiably favor African higher-education graduates certified in the Western hemisphere. My nuanced African identities (daughter/ sister/community/nation member) as connected to the African culture’s socioeconomic expectations and hence responsibilities made the latter reason stated above, with regard to my decision to come to Canada to pursue higher “mis-education”, even much more significant. Simply put, like many of us children of Africa, the push and pulls of our country home’s neoliberal economic realities necessitate the need to make the utmost sacrifices of leaving one’s family and all that which provides us with a sense of grounding and dignity for formal higher miseducation. This is with hopes to “better” our families’ material and social realities, and in turn to be alienated, fragmented, and dislocated from the very self.

African Spirituality: Pre-enslavement/Colonialism “Mtu Akikuita Mbwa Usibweke/When Someone Calls You a Dog You Don’t Bark Back”. (Njoroge, 2023)

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Who Were We? Spirituality has been and continues to be considered as the most critical element of African societies, since our origins in the Hapi Valley (The Earth Center, 2023). To conceptualize African spirituality in its entirety, one ought to understand African cosmology (Obenga, 2004). According to Mazama (2002), African spirituality can be defined as the “cosmic energy that permeates and lives within all that is”, which “confers a common sense to everything in the world, and thus ensures the fundamental unity of all that exists” (pp. 219–221). This ontological unity is as ancient as and synonymous with African spirituality, whereby: The whole universe was a living unity. Even those parts of the physical world which we are accustomed to think of as inanimate, e.g., stones, minerals, water, fire, air, etc., partook of a common life in which men and women and animals and birds and fishes and insects and plant and even the gods themselves shared. (Plumley, 1975, p. 24)

The energy that constitutes the active, dynamic principle that is believed to animate creation is what Africans identified and continue to identify as Life itself! This principle of ontological unity has at least two immediate and profound implications: firstly, “the principle of connectedness of all that is, based on a common essence; and the principle of harmony, based on the organic solidarity and complementarity of all forms. And what is the source of that energy that the Yoruba call Ashe? It is God itself. Everything that is shared in that divine essence and is, as a result, sacred”. (Mazama, 2002. pp. 219–220)

Rituals, an illustration and manifestation of African spirituality, were and continue to be critical in the expression of the above complex unity. Therefore, women and men did not and do not see themselves as distance from the cosmos, rather, “completely integrated into a universe that is much larger than any of them and yet is centered around them” (Mazama, 2002, p. 220). Furthermore, life and death are understood as analogous and hence spoken in the same breath, and only different in their modes of being. For: “dans l’homme, le corps n’est pas l’antithèse de l’âme; le présent est chargé du passé et gros de l’avenir. Dans l’univers, le ciel et la/ terre se rejoignent et la vie naît de la mort” [the body is not the antithesis of the soul or mind, the present is filled with the past and carrying the future. In the universe,

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the sky and the earth meet, and life is born out of death] (Elungu, 1987. pp. 23–24). Since life is understood as infinite, as it knows no end, death is simply another form of existence—“a rite of passage that allows one to gain another existential status, that of an ancestor, that is of a purely or almost purely spiritual being” (Mazama, 2002, p. 220). In such a world, the world that is inhibited by the spirits (ancestors and other spirits) and that of the living run seamlessly into each other, like a river runs into the ocean. And since Life is one, there cannot be dichotomy between the so-­ called natural and supernatural worlds, and in actuality it is generally understood as such. Therefore, it is generally understood and accepted that the main difference between the world of the spirits and that of the living is essentially “one of degree of visibility, the spiritual world being largely invisible but nonetheless quite real” (Mazama, 2002, p. 221). “It is for this reason that in many African societies, the so-called living-dead”, as Mbiti (1990) attests, “are buried within the family compound or land along with their belongings, so that they may continue to play a part in their family’s affairs. It is also for the same reason that we offer libations and food to them, as gestures of appreciation, hospitality, and respect” (Mazama, 2002, p. 221). Maintenance of that continual relationship with our transitioned loved ones is understood as a way to secure our protection, for they are the “the guardians of family affairs, traditions, ethics and activities” (Mbiti, 1990, p. 82). By virtue of their spiritual nature, we consider them closer to the Gods and “bilingual”—speak the language of the both the living and the spirit world. Therefore, they can petition the Gods on our behalf, communicate with us through dreams, and through divinations, which is made possible by the immaterial component of our being. Beliefs such as that new-born are ancestors who return to the world of the living (not as physical beings rather as spiritual personalities officially separated from the spirit world and reintegrated into the physical world respectively) and rituals such as naming ceremonies (a week after physical birth of child) underlines the reincarnation of the living-dead commonly within one’s own family (Mazama, 2002; Morodenibig, December 16, 2009b). Thereby once again confirming the African worldview that death and life are indeed complimentary, and hence limits between life and death do not really exist. For “life is born from death and death, in turn, is the prolongation of life” (Zahan, 1979, p. 45). “The circle, which is the African spiritual symbol par excellence, takes on its full meaning as it stands for the constant renewal of life through death and birth” (Mazama, 2002, p. 222). As

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the Bambara say: “life merges from divinity through birth and merges back into divinity through death, and through this cyclical transformation, we achieve immortality” (Mazama, 2002, pp.  221–222). This mutually beneficial relationship is also evidenced in ancestors’ protection of the living, who in return honor them through tributes paid to the ancestors, most notably keeping their names alive (Morodenibig, December 16, 2009b). Since the African spiritual world is understood as densely populated, ancestors are not the only spiritual entities to whom we may turn to (The Earth Center, 2023). “Next to the ancestral spirits, for example, are those of people who, for a variety of reasons, did not make it to the ancestral community” (Mazama, 2002, p. 222; Morodenibig, 2011). For instance, the spirits of divine origin that the Yoruba and Vodou practitioners call Orisha and Loa, who cover all aspects of nature and human existence, respectively. According to Farris Thompson (1984), the orisha are “the messengers and embodiments of ashe, spiritual command, the power-to-­ make things-happen, God’s own enabling light rendered accessible to men and women” (p. 5). Being “possessed by an orisha is to ‘make the god,’ to capture numinous flowing force within one’s body” (p. 9). “The same holds true about possession by the loa. In fact, the existence of what are often referred to as secondary deities is quite common in Africa, and we thus find the following ontological hierarchy, starting from the bottom, with natural elements, animals, the living, ancestors, and above them, the Orisha or Loa, all under the supreme authority of God” (Mazama, 2002, p. 222). As African people, the above ontological order is of paramount importance, for when I (within the we) think of ourselves, the individual self/ selves inadvertently understand the self as an organic part of the whole diverse spiritual and physical entities. Therefore, as demanded by Afrocentricity, reclaiming our whole selves ought to be within this ontological order (Mazama, 2002). Since “our blood is so old” and time never rests, what we are today is what our ancestors perceived as their tomorrow; our children are what we envision today to be our tomorrow; and let’s hope what we are today, our children will have enough humility to conceive as their yesterday (Morodenibig, N. N., December 16, 2009b). For the spiritual continuity to happen in a manner that supports the continuity of that “bloodline and destiny”, we ought to refute the western paradigm of “spiritual forgetfulness” that continues to allow us to claim this amnesia of our ancestors’ suffering and sacrifices, rendering their experiences to

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have been in vain (Morodenibig, 2011). Born of this act of utmost dishonor to our ancestors, we now stand alone, as though we are the first to walk this face of earth. And since as “humans we are the most vulnerable and dependent among all beings in nature, we have become alien to the very nature” we come from and that which continues to feed, shelter, and care for us through its preserving essence, becoming what I (within the we) call a “parentless-human” (The Earth Centre, December 16, 2009). Akin our enemies/those who desired/desire to destroy our humanity and everything African including its approximately 2500  years of civilization, we have become part of nature’s list of enemies, always contending with its indiscriminate ferocity (Morodenibig, 2011; The Earth Center, 2023). And given our disconnect from nature, which by default extends to our disconnect with the ancestral world, we fight a war already won by nature, as it is without the protection of our ancestors, who as I noted above if honored would plead with the divine world on our behalf. “Having accepted the idea that our deities could not be true messengers of [the Creator], we have discarded them, only to embrace someone else’s god and messenger” (Mazama, 2002, p. 223). This explains the state of confusion, even worst off what I consider as a state of “spiritual crisis”—spiritual helplessness and hopelessness. It is not surprising that Africans, among any nation in the world, have the most numbers of churches (and mosques) per square feet, both in the continent and in the diaspora (BBC.Com, 2018). This explains the perpetuation of the culture of “praying-away-­ your-problems” in Christian circles, particularly among the economically poor Africans, a mental escape—just like a drug itself. Yet, as our Akan ancestors remind us in a proverb, “Ɔkwantia yɛ mmusuo” A shortcut is a misfortune! (Kambon, personal communication, n.d).

Current/Neoliberal Climate: “Cultural Insanity— Out of Our African Minds!” What has Become/Becoming of our African Self/Selves? What has Become/is Becoming of the African self/selves is what Mfundishi Jhutyms Ka N Heru (2016), an African Spiritual Warrior, calls us being “out of [our] Afrikan minds”. May I clarify, this is not because we are crazy by nature (Njoroge, 2023). Rather, a consequence of our addiction to White male domination (racism), White supremacy in essence. Mfundishi (a Kiswahili title for a highly regarded and accomplished teacher in the

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lessons of life) Heru advises that “this drug called white male domination is the European American Worldview that perpetuates a Eurocentric political and economic systems of aggression, exploitation and destruction”, esfet (disorder, wrong doings—the opposite of Maat/Ma’at—“truth, justice, righteousness and harmonious balance”), as I shall further expound (2016, p. 12). True to my promise to capitalize and build on our ancestral and elderly knowledges and wisdom, in their honor as per the African tradition, I borrow Mfundishi Heru’s all-encompassing and detailed insight on some of the main challenges facing Africans in 63rd century African time as listed below: 1. “Kultural insanity, out of our afrakan minds. 2. Poor self esteem, we have been trained not to support things Afrakan-White ice is cooler than Black ice. 3. Self-hate, our standard of beauty and importance is based on Europeans and the systems of White male domination. 4. Colonization of the Afrakan Mind, and the Afraka continent by White male domination, and Arabism under the disguise of Islam [especially in the continent/our beloved motherland]; 5. Wazungu [White people in Kiswahili] enslavement of the Afrakan mind, spirit, and body. Seventy percent of the U.S.A prison industrial complex system [this reality easily mirrored in Canada] are filled with Afrakans-63rd century slavery, there are more Afrakan men in jail than in higher education, twenty-first century western slavery; 6. Economic instability, Afrakans are at the bottom of the economic ladder. Afrakans do not employ 2% of Afrakans in Amerikka and the White dollar stays in Black hands about 10  minutes on the average; 7. Mis-education, a life-threatening training program for a job in the Euro-American, matrix system of White male domination; 8. Poor health, we are killing ourselves in the name of progress, on one hand and totally unprepared to address our health crises, like AIDS and mentacide on the other hand; 9. Spiritual assassination, we have forsaken and we have been programmed to be ashamed of our own traditional Afrakan spiritual systems and religions, only to embrace the religion of our oppressors, which promises nothing but death to the Afrakan of the 63rd century;

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10. The Afrakan has no national identity or collective Worldview as an Afrakan people that represents our security, health, education, political or economic future. We are not West Indian, Jamaican, Trinidadians; African-Americans, We Are Afrakans! 11. Afrakans of the 63rd century cannot defend themselves against White male domination or Arab enslavement, theft and domination of Northern Afraka, and the saddest part of this dilemma, is that it’s not on our agenda. 12. Suicidal music and an enslaving entertainment industry, that develops and supports music and movies that destroys the Afrakan community, self-esteem, and a positive spiritual lifestyle in Amerikka or the world; 13. Destruction and dismantling of the Afrakan family, more than 65% of Afrakan families in the U.S have no father in the home and children are raising children. 14. Poor visible Afrakan leadership, the leaders who have been chosen for Afrakan people are collaborators of the matrix, White male domination. 15. Afrakans have lost the ability to feed themselves, even with rich land in Afraka and in the Americas, because we are plugged into the matrix of White male domination, and it has a death wish for us. 16. Afrakans have not learned how to turn the billions of dollars that we generate in the U.S gladiator-sports Industry into economic stability for the Afrakan Kem-unity or communities, like Independent schools, homes or housing developments and Kultural Centers here in America [and I would add akin in Canada, Europe and across the Afrikan continent] 17. There are very few independent Afrakan schools, and the ones we do have are having financial difficulties and they are under siege and declining. Afrakans who have money and economic power are blind, dumb and ignorant of the real needs of their own people hear or in our home-land Afraka”. (2016, pp. 17–18)

Healing from the Maafa/Destruction: “Re-Africanize and Dewhitenize” “The Best Way to Fight an Alien Culture Is to Live Your Own.” (Okuninibaa Safisha Nzingha Hill Adélékè, n.d.)

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How Do We Heal? Nana Obadele, a repatriated African and a chief in the African soil, asserts that “it is easiest to Re-Afri[c]anize, and hardest to De-Whitenize”. This statement echoes the exhaustive and detailed list of symptomologies we witness within the African self/selves, families, communities, and Black African Nation at large that Mfundishi Heru advocates for immediate comprehensive healing of the body, mind, and spirit from this historical and intergenerational addiction to the “white male domination (racism), white supremacy” (2016, p.  12). Given my ever-growing understanding of this White-supremacist ever-tragic drug, as a child of great Africa journeying in the Becoming of a Healer (may my ancestors guide me, and if they will!), I wish to push Mfundishi Heru’s call to action for a comprehensive healing process and journey that transcends our current symptomologies of White-supremacist trauma and the resultant White addiction, to heal our past, current, and future trajectorial manifestation. Spiritual warrior and healer Mfundishi Heru (2016, p. 12) offers a spiritual clinical formulation and recommendation that “like most destructive drugs it controls our desires, our ambitions, and our minds creating an illusionary self-destructive reality that alters the way the Black [African] humans would naturally function if they were in their right Afrakan mind!” He asserts that “Afrakan people not only need a healing, mentally, physically, and spiritually, but we need a new worldview that has our own best interest at heart”. “Afrakans worldwide are insane, kulturally retarded, miseducated, suffering from severe health problems, and mentally handicapped because our minds have been enslaved” (Mfundishi Heru, 2016, p.  12). He reiterates that we have been victimized by the White male domination system, and as addicts revictimize ourselves with “self hate, the images of our spiritual Kultural deities, and what little we think we know of our story and self-image”, like its second nature to us (Mfundishi Heru, 2016, p. 12). Simply put, by embracing White people’s mindset, which I have come to hypothesize to be by nature “Suicidal and Homicidal”, as informed by their historically documented destructive nature and culture, we too have become killing our very human self/selves and nature alike, respectfully!

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African Culture Is Preventative and Curative Medicine with Full Ancestral Potency

MAAT: Ptah (power), usually stands on a pedestal of the above shape … “Maat is associated with the foundation of the creation of which this pedestal is a symbol, principle according to which the universe is organized” (Ɔbenfoɔ Nana Kamalu, personal communication, n.d.). Maat-Ultimate Healing African Tool: As I have noted above, African culture has full ancestral potency to prevent and cure us from our current being Out of Our Afri[c]an Minds state, as Mfundishi Heru asserts. This will facilitate a return to the Africa/Africans (Merita-our original name) we once were for approximately 2500 years that we ever barely recall, let

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alone pay homage to, yet can always have full capacity to return to/ Become as historied by Chief Nangoli Musamaali’s powerful poem titled No More Lies About Africa and as preserved by our Dogon elders and initiatic teachers at The Earth Centre (2023). Tata Obenga (father in some Abantu speakers, as I prefer to honor him) educates us that the concept of Maat is complex and multilayered and, to be understood, requires its examination on all of its three levels: 1. Universal level—the concept of Maat expresses the harmony of all elements as clearly established, each in its rightful place, the notion of the ordered Whole, the cosmos. 2. Political level—the concept of Maat works against injustice. It is in the name of Maat that the Pharaoh subjugates his rebels and successfully achieves the domination of foreign lands. 3. Individual level—“Maat’s premise is on embracing specific rules of living that is in concert with moral principles.” It is a core belief that whoever that lives in accordance with these rules and principles achieves universal order in her/his own life, and in practical terms, and subsequently lives in harmony with the ordered Whole. Undeniably, the most salient feature of the African culture and its worldview is the principle of harmonious interaction between humans and nature, as well as with the Cosmic Divine. Our current state of Being Out of Our Afri[c]an Minds clearly stands in opposition to Maat (Heru, 2016). Therefore, embracing our own ancient cultural concept of Maat, “uprightness, righteousness, truth, [and] justice”, will inadvertently subvert our addiction to this drug called White Male Domination, a “European American Worldview that perpetuates a Eurocentric political and economic systems of aggression, exploitation and destruction” upon our very African self/selves (Obenga, 2004, p. 49). Esfet-disorder, wrong doings, and thus the opposite of Ma’at/Maat is to blame for the pervasion of our African self/selves, as effectively attained by cultural genocide (Mfundishi Heru, 2016).

In Conclusion: Africans, Honor Your Ancestors! Since my/our blood is old, I honor my ancestors by acknowledging that I am the physical manifestation of their bloodline and destiny (Morodenibig, December 16, 2009b). Therefore, as their embodiment in this physical

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realm, who else to better plead with the divine world for this transcendental healing, other than my ancestors through whom I Became? Won’t it be for all our behalf, as through me, they live on? (Shenmira, 2016). May this chapter be a lamentation to our ancestors and the divine world for my/our healing, we children of Africa/Merita-Amina/it shall be so (The Earth Center, 2023)! As I have noted above and as demanded by Afrocentricity, the movement to reclaim Our African Minds, to be whole again, cannot be outside of the African ontological order “…with natural elements, animals, the living, ancestors, and above them, the orisha or loa, all under the supreme authority of God.” This is because, our ancestors “provide guidance through messages about how to operate in this life, in this world, if we honor them! Unless we do just this, unless we do not allow their name, their suffering, and their sacrifices [the totality of their dignity] to be forgotten, then we will stand alone in this world, lost! And I am afraid that this is just what has happened to so many of us. Having turned our backs onto our ancestors, we have fallen in a state of incredible confusion”, as our elders Mazama, Mfundishi Heru, and Morodenibig accurately explicate and rightfully warn us against, as I have asserted above (2016, 2002, pp. 222–223, 2011)!

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Coetzee, M. (2009). (Re)storying the self: Exploring identity through performative inquiry. South African Theatre Journal, 23, 94. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. DeGruy J. (2014). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injury and healing. Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://www.joyDeGruy. com/post-­traumaticslave-­syndrome Earth Center. (n.d.). The history of the Dogon. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.theearthcenter.org/history Elungu, P. E. A. (1987). Tradition Africaine et rationalite moderne. L’Harmattan. Farris Thompson, R. (1984). Flash of the spirit: African and Afro-American art and philosophy. Vintage. Heru, M. J. (2016). The spiritual warriors are healers. Charles Child Publishing. Holmes, D., Murray, S., & Perron, A. (2006). Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: Truth, power and fascism. International Journal of Evidence Based Health Care, 4, 180–186. Marimba, A. (1999). What is culture? Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHbLahuPBw Mazama, A., & Asante, M.  K. (2005). Cultural genocide. Encyclopedia of black studies. Sage Publications, Inc.. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://books. google.ca/books?id=VL91AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT241&lpg=PT241&dq=Cult# v=onepage&q=Cult&f=false Mazama, M. A. (2002). Afrocentricity and African spirituality. Temple University. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from https://journals-­sagepub-­com.ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca/doi/pdf/10.1177/002193402237226 Mbiti, J. (1990). African religion and philosophy. Doubleday. Morodenibig, N. N. (2009a, August 21). YouTube-God v/s Demons. Retrieved October 3, 2020, from The Earth Centre.com: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Q1uclw3MHmo&ab_channel=TheEarthCenter Morodenibig, N.  N. (2009b, December 16). YouTube-power of the ancestral spirit. Retrieved October 3, 2020, from The Earth Centre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miIJaCe7sE0&ab_channel=TheEarthCenter Morodenibig, N. N. (2011). The Berlin conference: Creating the Devil’s Garden. Philosophy Podium (Vol. 2)  – A Dogon Perspective. Firefly Productions, The Earth Center. Njoroge, W. (2023). “Mtu Akikuita Mmbwa Usibweke”/When Someone Calls You a Dog, Don’t Bark Back! In A. Eizadirad & N. N. Wane (Eds.), The power of oral culture in education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­18537-­3_2 Nobles, T. W. (1985). Africanity and the black family: The development of a theoretical model. The Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture, Inc.

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Obenga, T. (2004). Egypt: Ancient history of African Philosophy. A Companion to African Philosophy, 31. Okuninibaa, S.  N. H.  A. (n.d.). The best way to fight an alien culture is to live your own. Plumley, J. M. (1975). An eighth-century Arabic letter to the King of Nubia. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 61(1), 241–245. Shenmira I. N. (2016, December 31). Why do we still believe religion will work for us age 12–30 Jesus was at our ancestors temple (Kemet) being initiated. Center of Pan African Thought. Retrieved August 9, 2020, from https:// www.panafricanthought.com/video/why-­d o-­w e-­s till-­b elieve-­r eligion-­ work for-­us/ The Earth Center.org. (2023). The history of the Dogon. Retrieved May 10, 2023, from https://www.theearthcenter.org/history Wright, D.  B. (1985). Psychopathic racial personality and other essays paperback (2nd ed.). Third World Press. Zahan, D. (1979). The religion, spirituality, and thought of traditional Africa. University of Chicago Press.

PART III

Spirituality and Land-Based Education

CHAPTER 12

Three Souls in Search for the Inner Peace and Spiritual Journey: Educational Moments Anushay Irfan Khan, Joel Mukwedeya, and Sameer Kapar

Introduction The question of spirituality and what it entails is more than just the practice of defining spirituality—it is a process of exploration into consciousness and socialization. This journey begins with exploring the relationships between spirituality and religion and further how we, as individuals, have arrived at defining spirituality through our own unique lived experiences. In Western cultures, spirituality is distinct from religion—the latter guided by sacred texts and scriptures, and the former seems more distinctive and personal (Dei et al., 2000). Religion is a social, organized set of beliefs, dogmas, rules, and practices shared by a group and is used as a moral standard to evaluate their lives. Spirituality, on the other hand, suggests and promotes individual autonomy, giving rise to a sense of peace, health, healing, accountability, and, above all, purposeful connection to the source

A. I. Khan • J. Mukwedeya (*) • S. Kapar Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_12

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of power and meaning. These varied perspectives remind us that the study and exploration of spirituality is a process that is not only profoundly varied and personal but involves an intentional process of looking within the self (Wane, 2002). On the other hand, the chapter is based on a transnational spiritual exploration comparative perspective on religion and spirituality. Here, three spirits have formed a narrative rooted in connectedness despite divisive global politics (Cajete, 1994; Wangoola, 2000). Students, both undergraduate and graduate, or anyone looking to understand the personal spiritual journey will benefit from this chapter. Also, a curious reader attempting to unpack their spiritual journey will appreciate how the authors have explored spirituality’s correlation with personal experiences in trying to understand themselves. Moreover, this chapter sheds light on how spirituality can be mobilized to change both within and across communities. Such will create spaces for the role that spirituality can and does play in community engagement. The community organizations, educational institutions, or individuals can work collectively to search for and build a better world rooted in spiritualties of solidarity. However, this chapter is not a critic of any religious or spiritual beliefs but the authors’ interpretation of spirituality in their journey. The Shona describe Ubuntu spirituality as both the private and intimate relationship between humans and the divine, and the range of assets that accrue from that enabling relationship. In this way, individuals are encouraged to learn how to trust their natural instincts, to listen, to look, to create, to reflect and observe phenomena deeply, to understand and apply their intuitive intelligence, and to recognize and honor the teacher of the spirit within themselves and the natural world. By doing so, Ubuntu spirituality resuscitates our own culture and becomes a means of attaining social justice. Moreover, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated, and one can begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought; and that thought is only a minuscule aspect of intelligence. The self awakens realizing that all the things that truly matter—creativity, love, beauty, security, joy, and inner peace—arise from beyond the mind.

Religious Identities and Perspectives: The Shona Identity and Christianity Among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, spirituality is the fulcrum upon which life revolves since the humanity’s existence and highlights the interconnections we have with other beings. Spirituality refers to a broad set of

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principles that transcend all religions and is about the relationship between us and something more significant in both public and private lives. Spirituality means being in the right relationship with all that is. It is a stance of harmlessness toward all living beings and an understanding of their mutual interdependence (Kaiser, 2000). The Shona, like other traditional Africans, believe in one Supreme God (Mwari/Musiki), the Maker of all humanity, and all things—seen and unseen. Therefore, humanity and nature depend on sustenance from the Creator through the realm of invisible spirits, comprising ancestral spirits, which are both territorial (mhondoro) and clan (mudzimu wemusha/ dzinza). Unlike some Eurocentric ways of knowing, the Shona maintain connectedness with the living and the dead as a core part of their spirituality from the cradle and beyond the grave. By honoring this unalienable code, the Shona accomplishes the unity of affect and reason, the individual and society, the past, present, and future, connecting the human spirit to its source of power and meaning. This belief of continuity strengthens family ties among the Shona exemplified by a proverb, “ukama urimbo, kudambura haubvi,” meaning that family ties are like latex, which might break but will never vanish. This proverb emphasizes lasting kinship ties among the living and the departed with the Creator. Spirituality offers space for resistance to coloniality to heal as we find hope in ourselves. Spirituality has survived the efforts to suppress and subvert it from colonial administrators and the Christian churches that worked in collaboration with the former. Shona people can co-opt some of the cultural practices into Christian worship for those who practice syncretism, and outright rejection of Christian spiritual expressions. Spirituality enables people to withstand attempts to erode the culture through cultural hegemony, creating an essential site of knowledge for dealing with oppression (Dillard, 2000; Dillard et al., 2000).

In Search of the Divine From the perspective of a Muslim woman in Pakistan, spirituality and religion are both entangled in Islam’s symbiotic relationship. Even the use of the terms “spirituality” and “religion” shed light on the interconnectedness between institutionalized religion such as rituals are part of Islam (such as namaaz and zakat) and spiritual aspects of religion such as Sufi traditions and music (naats). Both spirituality and religion work in tandem to impact the “whole being” (Iqbal, 2007). In the context of Pakistan

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and Islam, spirituality has been profoundly shaped by how Islam defines itself. As a deen or way of life guided by a belief in the Divine (a non-­ being, invisible force greater than oneself), spirituality serves as the central source of guidance for all Muslims connected to all aspects of an individual’s life (Iqbal, 2007; Abou-Allaban, 2004). Spirituality and religion are a way of life rather than religious or spiritual acts or practices. Spirituality begins at the core that finds and makes connections between “Being and Nonbeing” (Shahjahan, 2005, p. 297). The recognition of non-being is the idea of nothingness (Nakagawa, 2000; Nishitani, 1983). It is a belief in what we see and what is invisible—the existence of a higher power (Shahjahan, 2005, p. 298) and duty toward others within and beyond one’s community, including family, elderly, strangers, nature, and the broader community (Shahjahan, 2005). Malidoma Somé (1995) argues that we possess a center within ourselves but have grown away from birth. He argues that this center is “both within and without … it is everywhere,” and it is our role to “realize it exists, find it and be within it” (Somé, 1995, p. 198). Definitions of spirituality are also heavily rooted in Islam as a way of life. It is a life epitomized by the continuous search and understanding of one’s spirit and center guided by “who we are, where we come from and where we are going” (Somé, 1995, p. 198). Spirituality is not merely a journey one takes on but also a journey we have always been on but must continuously reconnect to affirm our bearings and find balance.

Hinduism: Being Spiritual-But-Not-Religious Nepal and India may be the origin of Hinduism; however, Greek and Persians used “Hindu” to identify the land and people residing beyond the Indus/Sindhu River (Sugirtharajah, 2003; The Pluralism Project, n.d.). I may be from Nepal, but I am not a devout Hindu follower; being a student of science, I always sought the existence of God. I am an agnostic, and Hinduism, a polytheistic religion, allows me to be one. My belief systems enable me to explore, think, and learn about the ultimate questions of the existence of higher power and certain people experiencing misfortune and suffering. I identify myself as “spiritual-but-not-religious” (SBNR), meaning that I have no religious affiliation (Thagard, 2016). Spirituality is “the set of beliefs governing one’s relation to the self, to others and God.” I feel that it is an individual’s interpretation of life’s meaning and goal, the relationship and affinity with others, and

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purposeful and meaningful future (Beauregard & O’Leary, 2007; Murray & Zenter, 1976; Puchalski et al., 2009). The Western experience on religiosity is about “embracing specific doctrines and publicly participating in formal religious institutions,” whereas, in the East, religiosity is analogous to spirituality (Lazar, 2010). As an SBNR, I feel that religious institutions are hindering spirituality rather than enhancing it (Thagard, 2016). As a spiritual person, I seek answers to the complexity of life and identity, such as my being a good person, the meaning of pain, my connection with the surrounding environment and the world, my lifestyle, etc. I see Enlightenment as a personal spiritual journey that does not follow anyone (Lightwater, 2000). Being a Hindu liberates me from practicing any religious services or belonging to a congregation or reserving part of my income to my faith. My beliefs are at the core of Hinduism—karma, Dharma, reincarnation, or seva—providing answers to the ultimate questions of life and my purpose in life. In this chapter, I am looking into the similarities of my spirituality, as influenced by Hinduism, to African spirituality, which is truly holistic and acknowledges that “beliefs and practices touch on every facet of human life” (Olupona, 2014, para. 3). I am also working to show how Hinduism is compared to African Indigenous religions being dynamic, inclusive, flexible, and accommodating. However, this is my interpretation of the spirituality of Hinduism because I was a person who grew up in a Catholic school in the only Hindu kingdom reflecting on African spirituality and understanding Hinduism as a religion.

Relating Ubuntu in Personal Life—Joel’s Experience While I submit that I do not fit the description of a settler on beautiful Turtle Island, I am conscious that I am a visitor and an uninvited settler on Indigenous territories. Insidious colonial control structures and other settlers welcomed me to these Indigenous territories without the consent or support of the Indigenous peoples and caretakers of this land. I treasure and acknowledge this land and its Indigenous peoples, their strengths, struggles, and sovereignty. I pay tribute to our ancestors who were brought here in leg-irons and chains; those that lost their lives in the middle passage; and our relatives that continue to leave their motherland due to man-made and natural disasters, the curse of ethnic/religious divisions, leadership drought, greed, political victimization, and continued reliance on Eurocentric economic structures. I salute you all in the spirit of Ubuntu/Unhu.

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The Bible was introduced to me early through catechism, baptism, and confirmation classes, in that order. Since the more Biblical stories one would memorize and recite before the priest/evangelist/teacher, the more one was considered spiritual enough to benefit from Western education. Even though my parents were Christians, they were keener for me to pursue formal education, read from the White man’s books, and probe into the mind that had stolen a whole continent and its people. I, therefore, grew up more fluent and well versed in Biblical stories than traditional folklore. The proverb “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (Proverbs 13:24) suggests and serves as the inspiration for the nostalgic moments from my childhood of getting disciplined and the distinct use of the Bible to justify the punishment. References to the Bible to inculcate spiritual morality in us continued from the home into the school. My village nestled across the fertile and well-watered Nehwangura escarpment, southwest of Umtali, present-day Mutare, in Zimbabwe. It was home to several Christian denominations, each competing for its lion’s share of converts. Local trading centers, playgrounds, pastures, swimming ponds, and mills became the place for debates about reading choices with other churches. The Bible was the yardstick for proving the rightness or the wrongness of the specific churches. So central was it that memorizing its verses and citing them correctly in conversations and debates was, to some extent, a measure of spirituality. But I now interrogate my spiritual foundation that sidelined my own culture, which would edify me through the wisdom embedded in folk tales, songs, oratory, storytelling, riddles, proverbs, taboos, and poetry, among other ways to teach Unhu also known as Ubuntu.

Ubuntu/Unhu Concepts Ubuntu/Unhu is ultimately the values by which we have lived for millennia across Africa. Ubuntu/Unhu comprises one of the fundamental elements of what it takes to be a human being. Ubuntu promotes empathy, compassion, and helpfulness as reflected in the Zulu proverb: “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which translated into English reads, “A person is a person through other persons.” Mbiti states, “Since we are, therefore, I am” (Mbiti, 1969, p.  215). This statement is not very different from what Sartre (1958, p.  415, cited in Bergo, 2011) expressed in the argument that “my being in the world presupposes the existence of others” and that

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“others are for me as I am for them. I enter into relations with them much as they enter into relations with me” (p. 215). Therefore, although Ubuntu is distinctively African, it is exportable. Louw mentions the Zulu proverb, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which means, “a person is a person through other person,” illustrating the idea that our humanity can only be fully realized when we commune with others. After all, no man or woman is an island (John Donne’s Devotions, 1624). We are all born into people, anyway. The signature Ubuntu view of humankind acknowledges “I am, because we are, and since we are, therefore I am” (Mbiti, 1969, pp. 108–109). This assertion differs from Descartes (1637), cited in Grbich (2004), who affirms in the singular: cogito ergo sum (I think; therefore, I am), which forms the bedrock of Eurocentrism. On the contrary, in most traditions, the African word for human being is umuntu/munhu, an amalgam of the following elements: umzimba (body, form, flesh), umoya (breath, air, life), amandla (vitality, strength, energy), inhliziyo (heart, center of emotions), umqondo (head, brain, intellect), ulwimi (language, speaking), ubuntu (humanness), and umphefumela (spirit, shadow, soul) (Le Roux, 2000, p.  43). The humanness referred to here finds expression in a communal context rather than the individualism prevalent in many Western societies (Venter, 2004, p. 151). Battle explains the concept ubuntu as originating from the Xhosa expression: Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye Bantu, “Not an easily translatable Xhosa concept, generally, this proverbial expression means that each individual’s humanity is ideally expressed in relationship with others and, in turn, individuality is truly expressed.”

Ubuntu Spirituality Easterbrook (2003) illustrates how individuals live much better materially than their parents and grandparents did, yet are not as happy. The individuals sense “something” is missing, and for lack of a more ideal lexicon, we call this something “spirituality.” Here we define Ubuntu spirituality as a sense of the awe and reverence for life that arises from our relatedness to something both wonderful and mysterious, connecting us to the source of life itself. The creative arts open us to awe and wonder through music, dance, and poetry, (Deresiewicz, 2014, p  158). The spoken word, orature, and musical accompaniment lubricate Ubuntu spirituality through the realization that humanity is one (Ramose, 1999; Mucina, 2013).

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Spirituality, Creativity, and Music When we think or act, we do so in a limited space, whereas creativity has no limits. What could be more powerful than creation itself? My musical experience, for example, is about creativity. In music, we flourish within our ancestral base, not only for communication but also for communion, for celebratory expression and transcending our humanity. That is what we have been taught by our ancestors. There was no ancient wisdom without rhythm, sound, and melody. No matter what activity I am immersed in, it is the musicality behind the frequency that triggers and shifts my spirits. This shift materializes by heeding the creative wavelength. Music heals when you are sad. In a time of over reliance on rationalism, music is powerful as it takes away the sadness and it energizes us to forget about it. For our peace of mind, we must look somewhere else. If we look at the power of art—whether a visual or painting—it triggers something in us that cannot be explained by science. Art and the feeling it ignites and unites people. Humanity becomes one tribe. Because of my Ubuntu background, I have witnessed the illusion of division, differences, and separation that cause so much trouble around the world. Once people understand that they are one, a future where we are united will take place at lightning speed. After all, Africa is the cradle of humankind, where human beings began. I have a voice and need to acknowledge the power of my intuition: to acknowledge the power of which I know to be true and speak its reality. Ubuntu is about coming together, so we can be transformed and can become a symbol of the whole while keeping one’s integrity just as every droplet of water will keep its integrity when rainwater is mixed with the river water, the pond, the lake, and seawater, yet it holds value or recognition of the distinct experiences of each drop (Ulvestad, 2012). Likewise, Ubuntu teaches us that we are part of a whole, a part of one and it takes all our intentions and understanding to build that unity and to build that oneness of purpose. We come from the energy flux and are the energy flux. Therefore, the circle is important to the Ubuntu spirituality. The circle shows that we are one. In addition, Judge Mokgoro argues: In a hierarchy of legal principles, Ubuntu stands higher than ‘human dignity’, considered to be the mother principle of law. … Human dignity is usually said to be the mother of all rights … in that respect I would regard

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Ubuntu as the grandmother of all rights …; to me, Ubuntu goes even deeper than human dignity … we regard our beingness [sic] as related to the beingness [sic] of others, those we associate with, the community we live in … it is others who regard you with humaneness. (Interview by Wewerinke, 2007, p. 37)

For example, in 2006, former President Bill Clinton, who embraces Ubuntu in his philanthropic work, addressed a UK Labour Party Conference, urging the Labour delegates that society and collaboration is important because of Ubuntu. Mr. Clinton said, “If we were the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the wealthiest, and the most powerful person—and then found all of a sudden that we were alone on the planet, it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans” (Coughlan, 2006, para 5). To heal humanity from injustice, however, we must begin with healing the self from our own inner prejudices. One way of doing that is by tuning into the breath, into the body and the spirit. Ubuntu translates to “I am because we are” and if one flips that “we are because I am.” Ubuntu is not only a mantra, but a reminder that if we respond as one, then our combined might enrich our life, our love, our power and radiate across the planet and that is how we elevate the frequency of unity of purpose through love. We are all part of the human family. To date, many have drifted from this reality trying to live independently, forgetting the meaning of community, the meaning of family. Traditional Shona cosmology is based on our worldview: how we understand to be. We believe that this world was created by Mwari/God. And that the world is sustained by Mwari/God. And for that reason, we do not recognize that the world would ever come to an end, because God sustains it. That is why we did not build temples, or shrines, or physical representations of Mwari/God, the Creator because Mwari/God is a spirit. If we want to speak to Mwari/God, we speak through our Vadzimu/ancestral spirits. The latter represents all that is idealistic and moral about our Shona way of life and are usually associated with recent ancestors or with more remote cultural heroes whose exact descendants have been forgotten. They play a role in protecting society, but this protection may be withdrawn if the moral ideals of the Shona people are not respected. Like the wind, God is everywhere and invisible.

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Spirituality and Morality Our spirituality also directs our sense of morality as we are taught how to live with each other and how to take care of the environment. To us, the environment—trees, rivers, hills, glades, and mountains and the welkin— belongs to Mwari/God. We hear, smell, taste, observe, and touch nature. Owen Burnham (2000), in African Wisdom, reports that the African world is a world in which wisdom and knowledge are the keys to survival in the multi-dimensional spiritual universe where we are never far from the past, present and the future as represented by the ancestral spirits that are all around us. (p. 12)

By honoring our ancestors, we perpetuate the mutual loving bond that binds the quick, the departed, and the yet unborn to the generosity from the love of the Creator. Additionally, this process dovetails with the African philosophy of Sankofa, which proposes looking at the past to reclaim the future. Lotte Hughes (2003) stated this as follows: In my experience, indigenous peoples have many admirable qualities that are sorely needed in today’s world—including spirituality, egalitarianism, a sense of being grounded or centered, a lack of neurosis, wisdom, strength, usually a great sense of humor and perspective, too. They foresaw the global social and environmental crisis generations ago, and it’s about time the rest of us paid attention to their vision and example. (p. 8)

To be sure, the missionary translation of the Bible was aimed at replacing the Shona Mwari/God with the Biblical God in everything else but the name. If the missionaries had come to introduce a new God to the Shonas, they might have met much resistance, as had happened in the earlier mission ventures. The adoption of the Shona name Mwari for the Biblical God was the religious usurpation of the Shona. The missionaries took the Shona captive by colonizing the Shona Supreme Being (Mbuwayesango, 2006, p. 67).

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Arrival in Turtle Island My compatriot Vera’s story touched the Ubuntu people in Africa spirituality, because the latter knew that this land is understandable and revitalized. We appreciate that the land has knowledge which is important for maintaining the equilibrium of all life cycles (Mucina, 2013). When we arrived at new places to which we had travelled to visit relations, Grandpa would gather the soil of the land, letting it rest on his palm. Squatting frogs like in the characteristic pose of ancestral address, he would mix the soil and the water. Of these muddy waters he would have us drink. It was an initiation and a rite that united us with our new spaces and released the spirit. Locked in childhood innocence, we felt safe, we felt happy, as the soft scent of decaying vegetation tickled our nostrils. Yvonne Vera in Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals (1992, p. 48)

The Elders, my family, and the community taught me to venerate the spirit of the land and the spirit of the water in a special ritual/bira (singular)/biras (plural) wherever I sojourn. In fact, it is understood that the experience we have with specific elements helps us to develop language and knowledge to respect and connect with the space we occupy. Pouring libations before partaking in a meal is yet another ritual. Rituals express the full Shona worldview. The Shona believe that the universe is a spiritual world where they, as human beings, are ontologically linked to nature, fellow human beings, the ancestors, and God (Banana, 1991, p. 23). The ancestors occupy a very important place in Shona religion and cosmology. Therefore, we do not need to keep inventing knowledge that was already conceived by our ancestors. When we work with our ancestors, we heighten our spiritual consciousness and move forward and flourish. After all, I reflect their existence—I exist because they exist or as we assert “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”—A person is a person through other people or we could also repeat, “A thing is a thing through other things.” Meaning all things know each other in relationship to each other.

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Kismet, Kalaams, and the Knowledge Production: The Search for Spirituality First and foremost, I want to begin this section by paying homage to kismet—the privilege awarded to me by the Divine, the universe, and my ancestors. In doing so, I acknowledge the efforts, struggles, and challenges of the people who have come before me and will continue to come after me. By beginning with these sacred words and recognizing the Divine, I can ground myself in a feeling of interconnectedness—a connection to my people, culture, language, and land that extends beyond the material and into the spiritual. As I begin writing, I tune into the music echoing in the background. The entrancing sound and melodramatic glory of the kalaam (words) of Ameer Khusro—initially played over 40 years ago—echoes in the traditional qawwali (Sufi devotional music) format performed in collaboration between Ghulam Farid Sabri with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan—two renowned qawwali singers. Ancestors of Khan and Sabri sing the divine kalaam of Amir Khusro—“Rang” (color)— with passion and devotion as the song’s melodic heart unfolds, combining the sounds of the past and the present while igniting the sense of nostalgia and deep spirituality in connection with the Divine. In this kalaam, Khusro sings in appreciation of Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya whom Khusro admires as a spiritual guide; the metaphors poignantly express the soul’s longing for union with the Divine and the joy that comes in loving and devoting oneself to the Divine. The recreation of this kalaam by the vocalists’ ancestors further sheds light on the importance of interconnectedness through the devotion of the Divine. Upon tuning into the kalaams’ raw, soulful inflections, one is immediately transported to the bustling streets of Karachi on a Thursday evening—city streets flooded with shrine-goers preparing for a spiritual adventure. Growing up in Pakistan—a country reeling from the effects of the colonial project attempting to reclaim its resilient voice in 74 years of independence since the British Raj—the melodic sounds of Amir Khusro’s kalaam represent the spirituality omnipresent on the land. Growing up surrounded by a grounded belief in the devotion to the Divine, interconnectedness between ancestors, the self, and community—I am a spiritual being connected to the Divine through my socialization as a Muslim and as a believer in the message of the Sufi tradition. As a Muslim-identifying, able-bodied, heteronormative South Asian woman with a deep

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connection to my Indigenous roots, I am a spiritual being reclaiming the connection with my spirituality. I start this chapter with the message of peace from Prophet Muhammad and Ameer Khusro’s story of longing for the Divine to achieve what Shahjahan names as the process with which to “evoke my own spiritual agency and rupture the dominant Euro-American conventional approaches to knowledge production” (Shahjahan, 2005, p. 214). It is the disconnection that I feel with my spirituality that has brought me to the point of exploring how my experiences learning and working in the academy, and my complex entanglements, investments, and inheritances (Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2001; Dei & Kempf, 2006) with the colonial project have ruptured my connection both to spirituality and to community. My hope is for this chapter to speak to the eradication of spirituality from an anti-­ colonial framework by examining how spirituality has been “commodified” and coopted as an “individualistic and solipsistic” (Dei, 2000, p.  122) framework entrenched in the colonial imposition of knowledge production paving the way of a world entrenched in violence and divisive politics. By examining the “concerns and social practices emerging from colonial relations and their aftermath” (Dei, 2000, p.  117), I hope to center my spirituality as a discursive framework for recommendations on how we must create spaces within the self and our communities that become sites of resistance where colonized bodies and minds come together to resist ongoing colonial impositions and build community while seeking spiritualties of solidarity.

“Tajdeed”: Resisting, Reviving, and Renewing the Spirit My arrival in Canada as an international student and, later, as an immigrant woman of color exposed me to the complex power structures and hierarchies present within Canadian society. Outside the comfortable familiarity and interconnectedness of Pakistani spirituality, Canada’s conditions centered on a systematic culture of mechanistic individualism, competition, commodification, and capitalism. Through the eyes of a colonized, immigrant woman of color, Canada had stood as a symbol of abundance and a poster child for the luxuries of the “first world.” I had high hopes from the Canadian promise of a safe and equitable life that epitomized equal opportunity (von Heyking & Ray, 2010) and presented

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itself as a multicultural haven (Bissoondath, 2002). However, despite this political romanticization, I was met with deep disappointments at every turn. I was reminded under the guise of multiculturalism that a post-­ nationalist pan-Canadian identity could be developed in Canada—one that was “disconnected not only to culture or ethnicity, but also to common history or experience” (von Heyking & Ray, 2010). This disconnection presented Canada as a utopian land of apoliticization and neutrality. However, upon closer examination, it was the creation of this seemingly “neutral” condition that furthered what Somé refers to as the death of identity and exile from the most valuable parts of oneself (Somé, 1995, pp. 97–98). Bissoondath further describes the disconnect between the self and culture, ethnicity, and identity as “psychic surrender” (Bissoondath, 2002, p. 224), where the mind, body, and soul are in constant search of self-restoration and identity (Shahjahan, 2005, p.  219). This exile from the most valuable parts of myself laid the conditions in which I felt “disfigured” and “destroyed” (Fanon, 1963, p. 210). As I delved deeper into the academy, the university campus—as a microcosm of society—increasingly felt tainted with an overarching feeling of despair and systemic inequity. As I navigated my way through post-­ secondary education—a number among a sea of numbers on the institutional manufacturing line of education—my wide-eyed optimism was jaded by the realities of the colonial, colorblind, and neoliberal academy plagued with colonial ideologies that perpetuated systemic inequity. I realized that I had been strategically placed in the category of “the Other” (Said, 2003), consistently reminded of my positional inferiority (Shahjahan, 2005) and strategically granted a voice when diversity was “required.” I examined the multiple oppressions I experienced daily as an immigrant or at the hands of my religion, gender, and race. I enrolled in continuing education programs hoping that acquiring additional credentials would help me attain a level of “white excellence” that I was expected to live up to but knew was unattainable (Robus & MacLeod, 2016). These experiences and observations brought to light the deep-rooted colonial power and White privilege operating as a form of self-legitimizing and self-­ sustaining power that continually reinforced, protected, and perpetuated eliteness along the lines of skin color and race (Bhopal, 2017). I realized that racism in the academy was and continues to be subtle, nuanced, and covert (Bhopal, 2017). When racist complaints came to the

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forefront (by those who were brave enough to make them), they were dismissed as an overreaction or “fit” problem. The blame was always transferred to the victim, who was tagged as being unable to adjust, collaborate, or guilty of a bad attitude (Bhopal, 2017). However, the closer I looked, the more it became clear that it was the very system that engaged in “psychic surrender” (Bissoondath, 2002, p. 224), through the rupturing of the relationship between the self and one’s history, language, and culture—that also decided who could succeed and who was destined for failure. The culture of mechanistic individualism, competition, commodification, and capitalism coupled with a disconnect between my culture, ethnicity, history, language, and the invalidation of my experiences and knowledge in the academy began to injure my spirit (Wane, 2013). I had lost the feeling of interconnectedness to those around me. I started questioning my inner core, the wisdom, and lessons that had been passed down through ancestry from the devotion to the Divine, a deep tradition of resistance in the shape of rebellion that we maintained in our bodies and spirits. That showed me a blueprint for resistance and strength during times of turbulence. At this moment, I had returned to my spiritual roots and reconnected with my spirituality (Wane, 2013). In my Indigenous language, Urdu, the word “Tajdeed” refers to revival—the act of resisting and reviving to renew the spirit. With this desire for Tajdeed, I began to reconnect with my spirituality and the spiritual teachings of my ancestors. I began centering my spirit around the values and spirituality celebrated in my Indigenous ways of knowing: belief in the Divine; the importance of devoting the mind, body, and soul to the cause of the Divine; the value of community (as compared to the individual), family, and interconnectedness between all beings and the importance of empathy and lifting each other; belief in fluidity, spirits, and the supernatural; and the unwavering belief is kismet— the belief that what is written in your story of life is destined for a cause greater than the self. Most importantly, the spirit of resistance created the pathway for the independence of the subcontinent from the British Raj. The revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz speaks about the role and power of returning to spirituality in the face of oppression as a necessary step of healing the trauma of the people of the subcontinent in his famous poem, Hum Dekhange (“We will See”):

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‫ہم بھی دیکھیں گے‬ ‫جب ظلم و ستم کے کو ِہ گراں‬ ‫روئی کی طرح اُڑ جائیں گے‬ ‫ہم دیکھیں گے‬ ‫پاوں تلے‬ ٗ ‫ہم محکوموں کے‬ ‫یہ دھرتی دھڑ دھڑ دھڑکے گی‬ ‫اور اہ ِل حکم کے سر ُاوپر‬ ‫جب بجلی کڑ کڑ کڑکے گی‬ ‫ہم دیکھیں‬ We too shall see When the mountains of oppression and cruelty Will float away like carded wool We will see Underneath our feet—we the governed The ground will echo like a thumping heartbeat And the sky over the heads of the rulers Will echo with the sound of thunder We will see And only Allah’s name will remain Who is both elusive and present Who is the spectacle and the beholder I am the truth’ will be the acclamation I am the truth’ will be the acclamation Which I am, and so are you And then God’s own people will rule Which I am, and so are you We will see

Faiz speaks prolifically of the destination to the truth and to the Divine (elusive and present) standing alongside all of God’s people in the form of a union. His language alludes to the dangers and trauma of what has passed and the darkness that may continue while stressing the urgency of standing in solidarity with the burning desire for a new futurity (we will see) guided by kismet at the forefront. For Faiz and many decolonial thinkers, “freedom” from the entrapment of the spirit calls us not to prayer, but to imagination. In times of divisiveness and violence, how can we reconnect with the past and present, as a medium through which we imagine a new future of solidarity rooted in spirituality? Faiz’s now famous words “I am the truth’ will be the acclamation … Which I am, and so are you” speak to the many ways in which the

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colonized body must seek the truth from within while standing beside (not above) all people. In the context of spirituality and the value of relationships, the work of Memmi speaks to Faiz shedding light on the importance of acknowledging how the “reciprocal relationship between the colonizer and the colonized” (Memmi, 1991, p. ?) creates the conditions in which the colonized is dependent on the colonizer. This is a lingering relationship that persists even after the departure of the oppressor. Memmi’s words inspire us to interrogate and reflect on how our own colonial investments, inheritances, and commitments to colonial and Western knowledge systems have created the conditions for colonialism and imperialism to thrive (Shahjahan, 2005; Smith, 2012). For myself, in order to return to my inner core and “center” (Somé, 1995, p. 198), I had to examine my own actions and investigate how to center my spirituality to resist the colonial impositions that created the conditions in which not only my ways of knowing and spirituality were and continue to be devalued in the academy but further the Indigenous knowledges and wisdom of those who have been subject to the same violence. How can spirituality then be a tool for resisting collectively? How do we stand beside each other keeping at the forefront a collective burning desire for a new futurity rooted in the spirituality of solidarity? It is upon this journey of the mind, body, and soul that I began to develop strategies of not just fitting in and surviving but strategies for seeking and rediscovering spiritualties of solidarity for resisting and thriving.

Journey as a Hindu Educator Gururbrahmaa gururvishnu gururdevo maheshwarah; Guruh saakshaat param brahma tasmai shree gurave namah Guru is the creator (Brahma); Guru is the preserver (Vishnu); Guru is the destroyer (Maheshvara). Guru is verily the Supreme Absolute. To that very guru I bow, for He is the Supreme Being, right before my eyes. (Atkins, 2015)

My elders always encouraged me to recite this prayer, known as Guru Mantra, and growing up, I never questioned the rationality of this prayer. These words immortalized my teachers irrespective of my reverence and hatred toward anyone. I could not challenge my teachers to clear any doubts on any subject matter. I recall being sent to the principal’s office if

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we dared to question. Detentions were normal. Parents would be consulted on the types of punishment to be levied upon us. My religious belief did not allow me to ask or doubt my teachers or any elders—that would be disrespect to my teachers, and respect for elders is the foundation of Hindu culture (Bennett et al., 2010; The Pluralism Project, n.d.). I always wondered if this gave teachers supreme authority and if this sense of supreme authority made them one of the oppressors (Freire, 2000). Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “guru” as “a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern; one who is an acknowledged leader or chief proponent; a person with knowledge or expertise” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). In Bhagavad Gita, a well-revered scripture by Hindus, Lord Krishna instructs Arjun, “Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized souls can impart knowledge unto you because they have seen the truth” (Verse 4.34) (Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, 1972). Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda (1972) offers greater insight into the verse by maintaining that mental speculation or dry arguments cannot help lead one to the right path. Nor by independent study of books of knowledge can one progress in spiritual life. One must approach a bona fide spiritual master to receive the knowledge. Such a spiritual master should be accepted in full surrender, and one should serve the spiritual master like a menial servant, without false prestige. Satisfaction of the self-realized spiritual master is the secret of advancement in spiritual life. Inquiries and submission constitute the proper combination for spiritual understanding. Unless there is submission and service, inquiries from the learned spiritual master will not be effective. … Therefore, when the student is submissive and is always ready to render service, the reciprocation of knowledge and inquiries becomes perfect. (pp. 230–231)

My Hindu culture has taught me to be submissive and passive to my teacher. Well-established research is claiming the adverse effects of submissiveness in childhood (Gilbert et al., 2003). Any aversive early experiences and submissiveness can later onward develop a range of psychological problems in adulthoods. I equate this to systemic and institutional bullying by authorities. Such adverse activities and situations can disrupt cognitive development that may undermine intellectual capabilities and academic achievement (Gilbert et al., 2003; Wells et al., 2019). Moreover, bullying and terrifying educators can be one of the reasons that lead students to

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drop out of school (Townsend et al., 2008), in addition to other factors, such as ill health, malnutrition and poverty, and socioeconomic condition of the family (Sabates et al., 2010). The poverty and access to education have always been a challenge in South Asia, where most Hindus reside, that explains the low level of school attainment (Pew Research Center, 2016). My experience as an educator attests to a banking system of education that discourages students from being active participants in the schooling system. My contribution to the chapter is informed by my personal experience as an educator in Nepal as well as my academic experience as a student.

Locating the Educator Within I studied at a Catholic School in Nepal, a country that was a Hindu Kingdom. Teachers delivered instruction through lecturing to students who sat in neat rows at desks. Talking to anyone was restricted and students were required to dutifully listen and faithfully record whatever the teacher said. The educational environment was limited to the classroom and sometimes the near park. Information was confined to textbooks and the occasional visit to the school library. We grew up in the “banking” concept of education as Paulo Freire had described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 2000). The method of teaching and learning required the students to store the information relayed to us by teachers. Our classrooms were structured in such a way that our primary duty was to accurately recall the information provided by the teacher, and score depended on the accuracy of answers as written in the textbooks. We were highly discouraged to participate in any other way in the class but to simply absorb information delivered to us like sponges. For us, the world was static and unchangeable, and we were forced to fit into it. I do not know if the banking concept prevented us from developing critical thinking skills. To this day, I wonder if it is this lack of critical reflexivity that sets me apart from my peers. My journey as an educator began just after graduating from high school. I was not too fond of the traditional pedagogical approach that my colleagues and other teachers adopted. I wanted to bring a change to the way we taught and to not follow the instructions on what, when, and how to teach. The policies and institutions encouraged strict adherence to the traditional practices. Thus, we dutifully delivered the same lessons every year. However, lack of textbooks—I taught programming and computer

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usage—forced me to adapt to radical teaching methods by incorporating problem-based learning. Unlike others and my former teachers, I did not view students as consumers of facts. I opposed the thought of teaching as a combination of information-dispensing and school as daycare, where I would be sorting out academically inclined students from others to provide better education to the gifted students. I wanted to change the view of schools as an education factory in which we, the educators, were paid to prepare the students for standardized tests. Our performance review depends on how well our students regurgitate the information we had forced them to digest without knowing what they are learning. Teachers do occupy a prominent place in Hinduism. In Vedic tradition, a guru, usually a reputed priest, guided the secret knowledge of liberation as required for selfless service. The Guru Mantra highlights the Hindu tradition of equating a guru to God. A teacher “symbolizes greatness, excellence, magnitude, importance, status, and responsibility” (Jayaram, n.d., para 6) and came from all social classes and backgrounds (Vivekjivandas, 2011). I felt that this respect gave me some authority and recognition in the society. The Hindu ethical system insists that gurus should be treated with the utmost respect after parents and his word is inviolable (Jayaram, n.d.). Hindu traditions and rituals mention of “paying respects to a guru, touching the feet of a guru, serving the guru and taking care of his personal needs, praising and appreciating a guru, seeking the blessings of a guru, remembering and meditating on the name of a guru. … Gurus have the power to wash away sins, neutralize past karma, pass on spiritual energy to chosen disciples, or grant them liberation” (Jayaram, n.d.; Mukundcharandas, 2010; Vivekjivandas, 2011). Does this status of reverence and authority for teachers create oppression as discussed by Paulo Freire? In Hinduism, the caste system is the oldest and most complex social hierarchy that defines the foundation of religious purity. A person belongs to the caste from which (s)he is born and will remain in that caste until death (Klass, 1980). The caste system classifies people to perform specific roles and assign responsibilities. Historically, the caste system, in Hinduism, restricted mass literacy and education, and only the elite populations had formal education (Pew Research Center, 2016; Teltumbde, 2020). Hence, there are very few educators from the lower castes.

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Hinduism and African Spirituality Besides adherence of polytheism, Hinduism and African religions are similar and hold many parallels yet are distinct. My professional and personal experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa have led me into an enlightening journey to appreciate my own spiritual upbringing along with African spirituality. I discovered that African religion professed that the way of life was in search of truth (Lausanne Movement, 2000), which is like the goal of Hinduism (Sivakumar, 2014). The religious texts in Hinduism and African religions are transmitted to next generations orally. Rituals and traditions are the foundation of both Hinduism and African religions, and they existed to “shape the experiences based on normative patterns and hence to control and renew the world” (Ray, 1987, para 34). People have challenged and questioned me about the existence of so many temples, shrines, gods, and goddesses that decorate any cities in Nepal or India. Like African religions, Hinduism does not have a founder but one Supreme Deity and other deities under it. Both have numerous sects that allow facilitation of constant interactions of their choice of faiths or divinities; these multitudes of sects are accommodated in communities. The gods and spirits directly affect people’s lives through personal encounters as living agents (A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, 1972; Ray, 1987). In Hinduism, pitris or ancestors are highly regarded. I observed this extension of belief in respect for elders in African religions as well. We believe that there is a spiritual connection between ancestors and their living relatives (South African History Online, n.d.; Vivekjivandas, 2011). The similarities between Hinduism and African traditional religions allow me as a Hindu to relate to African religions and spirituality. I feel that my journey of self-­ exploration of spirituality should be my own experience. Hinduism has not restricted me to certain norms and traditions but to discover my own meaning of life while also appreciating and drawing on African spirituality to make sense of the world.

Conclusion In defining spirituality, despite the diverse positionalities—religious, geographical, and experiential—spirituality has brought us, the authors, to a continuous process of self-reflection and dialogue—a core component of

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spirituality. All three perspectives show that spirituality allows us to reflect on our interconnectedness, regardless of positionality, social class, race, and other identity markers. The Shona people of Zimbabwe, like Islamic spirituality, believe in a Supreme God known as Mwari/Musiki for the Shona people and Allah for Muslims. This force is seen as the Maker of all humanity. All things, seen and unseen, bind these two distinct perspectives in a belief that while souls are interconnected, they are connected to a singular divine force that transcends the self. This belief in a singular divine force is distinct from Hinduism, which is rooted in polytheism. However, despite three distinct beliefs and practices, there is a common and profound understanding of a higher power that allows one to ponder their impact on others. This commonality includes an in-depth consideration of those suffering or experiencing misfortune, oppressed, and repressed, and a connection within one’s family or community. Moreover, while in the Shona community, religion and spirituality are not as entangled as with Islamic spirituality and Hinduism. The essence of all belief systems lies in the process of understanding the human spirit, its power in unpacking its journey, and its duty—existential questions that set the foundation for questions relating to spirituality. Burnham (2000) argues that this interconnectedness is at the core of spirituality, and exploration and making these connections guide the spiritual journey. Moreover, interconnectedness brings us together on the journey, which is the process of introspection. The journey examines the connections between the individual, society, and the divine, the past, the present, and the future. It also connects the human spirit to its source of power and meaning. Furthermore, the common thread of differentiating between spirituality and religion ties the journey together. Despite the connection between religion and spirituality, the stories shed light on the Western and Euro-American practices of binding institutionalized religion to spirituality and severing the fluidity and richness of spirituality as transient and ever-moving between space and time. The power of spirituality and its resistance to falling into divisiveness also shed light on the collective strength and healing powers of all spiritual beliefs. It serves as an essential site of knowledge—creating the conditions for diverse lived experiences to come together in a time when capitalist and worldly classifications have shattered interconnectedness between beings. Moreover, as an

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essential site for knowledge—the production and search for knowledge— it becomes clear that spirituality can serve as a tool for resisting divisive politics, colonialism, and coloniality and creating the space to focus on suffering and violence.

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Sabates, R., Akyeampong, K., Westbrook, J., & Hun, F. (2010). School drop out: Patterns, causes, changes and policies. In K. M. Lewin & UNESDOC (Eds.), Paper commissioned for the EFA global monitoring report 2011, The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education. UNESDOC. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000190771 Said, E. W. (2003). Orientalism. Penguin. Shahjahan, R. A. (2005). Mapping the field of anti-colonial discourse to understand issues of indigenous knowledges: Decolonizing praxis. McGill Journal of Education / Revue Des Sciences de l’éducation de McGill, 40(2), Article 2. https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/566 Sivakumar, A. (2014, September 1). The meaning of life according to Hinduism. Philosophy 1100H Blog. https://u.osu.edu/group5/2014/10/12/the-­ meaning-­of-­life-­according-­to-­hinduism/comment-­page-­1/ Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books Ltd. Somé, M. P. (1995). Of water and the spirit: Ritual, magic, and initiation in the life of an African shaman. Tarcher/Putnam. South African History Online. (n.d.). African traditional religion. Retrieved August 27, from https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-­traditional­religion Sugirtharajah, S. (2003). Imagining Hinduism—A postcolonial perspective. Routledge. Teltumbde, A. (2020). Dalits: Past, present and future. Routledge. https://doi-­ org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.4324/9781003030300 Thagard, P. (2016). Spiritual but not religious—Does it make sense to reject religion while maintaining spirituality? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/hot-­thought/201610/spiritual-­not-­religious The Pluralism Project. (n.d.). What does “hindu” mean?. Harvard University. Retrieved May 15, from https://pluralism.org/what-­does-­“hindu”-­mean Townsend, L., Flisher, A. J., Chikobvu, P., Lombard, C., & King, G. (2008). The relationship between bullying behaviours and high school dropout in Cape Town, South Africa. South Africa Journal of Psychology, 38(1), 21–32. https:// doi.org/10.1177/008124630803800102 Ulvestad, A. A. (2012). Ubuntu in African traditional religion. Unpublished MA Thesis. University of Oslo. Venter, E. (2004). The notion of ubuntu and communalism in African educational discourse. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23, 149–160. Vera, Y. (1992). Why don't you carve other animals? TSAR. Vivekjivandas, S. (2011). Hinduism: An introduction. Swaminarayan Aksharpith. https://books.google.ca/books?id=espUMwEACAAJ

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von Heyking, J., & Ray, E. (2010). Multiculturalism and problems of Canadian unity. Universitatsverlag Winter GmbH Heidelberg. https://opus.uleth.ca/ handle/10133/3268 Wane, N. (2002). African women and spirituality: Connections between thought and action. In E. O’Sullivan, A. Morrell, & M. A. O’Connor (Eds.), Expanding the boundaries of transformative learning: Essays on theory and praxis (pp. 135–150). Palgrave Macmillan. Wane, N. N. (2013). [Re]claiming indigenous knowledge: Challenges, resistance, and opportunities. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1), Article 1. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19244 Wangoola, P. (2000). Mpambo, the African multiversity: A philosophy to rekindle the African spirit. In G.  Dei, B.  Hall, & D.  Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in the global contexts: Multiple readings of the world (pp. 265–277). University of Toronto Press. Wells, R., Jacomb, I., Swaminathan, V., Sundram, S., Weinberg, D., Bruggemann, J., Cropley, V., Lenroot, R.  K., Pereira, A.  M., Zalesky, A., Bousman, C., Pantelis, C., Weickert, C. S., & Weickert, T. W. (2019). The impact of childhood adversity on cognitive development in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 46(1), 140–153. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbz033

CHAPTER 13

The Soul in Soul Music: Educational Tools for Decolonial Ruptures Sein A. Kipusi

The end of the essential black subject also entails a recognition that the central issues of race always appear historically in articulation, in a formation, with other categories and divisions and are constantly crossed and reclosed by the categories of class, of gender and ethnicity. —Stuart Hall

Introduction A genre born of the Afro-American experience, soul music seems to have sprung from the blues clubs, churches, and streets of the US cities, where R&B, gospel, and doo-wop rang out in chorus. As soul music began to take form and filled the air during the Black Power Era, a small but committed group of musicians and singers felt obligated to create music that was transformative as well as entertaining. This chapter conceptualizes the education embedded in the ‘soul’ factor of Afro music, and although the definition of a soul is often subjective and ambiguous, this chapter attempts to position the soul in soul music as conclusively and inherently

S. A. Kipusi (*) Centennial College, School of Advancement, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_13

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undefinable. Using several cases of Black cultural theorists, I argue that the soul in soul music is uniquely embedded in subjective narratives derived from the intersection of oppression—politically, socially, and economically. I examine how the soul is in a state of constant fluctuation without a time constraint. The soul is thus pre- and posthuman, and as such, when one defines the soul in soul music, it is constrained within the boundaries of aesthetics. In all that, I do acknowledge the fact that the soul in soul music is part and parcel of the people of African ancestry. This music was their soul under slavery as they endured hard labour especially in plantation agriculture. This music was their soul as they were forced to witness the lynching of one of them. The music was their consolation as they got branded as ‘cattle with hot coal’. What lessons do we learn from the experience of our ancestors?

Origins and Symbolism of Soul Music The recording of soul music in the music industry can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s in the African American community (Miller, 1976, pp. 194–172), although soul music has had a long history from slavery era. The humming, without saying a word, was all part of soul music. However, during the recording of soul music in the 1950s and 1960s, we see the combined elements of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz (Miller, 1976, p.  194). According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is “music that arose out of the Black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm and blues into a form of funky, secular testifying”. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls, and auxiliary sounds (Miller, 1976, p.  194). Since the 1960s there have been derivatives and subgenres influenced by soul music, such as blue-eyed soul, neo soul, funk music, British soul, and northern soul (Ibid). The unfortunate aspect of this was Black histories were not acknowledged by White Americans who took up soul music song and made it theirs. As such, soul music brought several African American music labels such as Motown, Atlantic, and Stax records into the mainstream, during the civil rights movements. The notion of soul music was the sound and ‘soul’

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of African Americans during a time when extreme prejudice, racism, and discrimination were rampant in America. The sound of soul music could have been a platform for the oppressed in American society to feel connected with others that are going through the same set of different struggles. The essence of the soul in soul music is a bridge of unity in addition to highlighting the intersections of oppression politically, economically, and socially. Although the ‘mainstream birth’ of soul music thus took place between the 1950s and 1960s, the definition of the soul as an entity has been defined as being immortal, beyond the body of a human, essentially life as we know it. This concept of the immortality of a soul becomes the basis upon which this chapter examines its relationship with the soul in soul music and its connection with oppression socially, politically, and economically. Weheliye (2002) regards the souls of Black bodies as a rejection of ‘man/woman’ in its universalist, post-enlightenment context, a black hole, a cosmic slave hole that encompasses the history of slavery on the consciousness of a Black ‘human’ body. If the rational ‘man’ is one which the Black body can never be, one may examine if the soul in soul music is the ‘irrational man’. The ‘man’ beyond the of colonial and racialist histories proposed on the Black body. The soul is a gateway, a border crosser of an alternative logic of what constitutes the ‘human’ definition of man and essentially of life. If soul music is not the rational ‘man’, the dominant discourse of American-European cultural imperialism, the irrational ‘man’s’ representation in soul music would be the ‘other’, the non-White, heterosexual, male subject. This leads to the imagery and context of how soul music is portrayed in mainstream society as being a representation of the ‘other’.

Soul Music and the Struggle for Equality The struggle for equality of Black bodies in the Americas continues today. Speaking as a third-world, migrant female body, I am familiar with the prejudice against my race as a visible minority living in Toronto, Canada. The representation of Black bodies is deemed in a state of homelessness and is treated as such. NourBese Phillips (1998) states in Black W/holes “time and again in the media, the involvement of African men and women in crime becomes the excuse to question the effectiveness of the immigration act” (Phillips, 1998). Understanding my location as a self-­identification

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is imperative when writing this chapter because as Alcoff (1991) states where one speaks from affects the meaning and truth of what one says and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend one’s location (Alcoff, 1991, p.  12). Tying this to Weheliye’s argument on the souls of Black bodies as a rejection of ‘man’ in its universalist, post-enlightenment context, a Black hole, a cosmic slave hole that encompasses the history of slavery on the consciousness of a Black ‘human’ body. One may argue that the soul in soul music is the immortal struggle for equality of the human body. The sound of oppressed spirits that carry a fight. In theory, this chapter, in the extension of my Black body, is a fight for the oppressed. Philip’s examination of the criminalized Black body shows how soul music is an avenue of the departure from the illustration of the violent Black body. Philip’s highlights how the image of the criminalized Black body is a hole, a subject without a soul. Weheliye’s cosmic slave hole may analyse how soul music is the transition to manifest this subject, Black body, into a space that defies ‘rational’ man limitation. The soul in soul music represents the voice of the other, the visible majority, the struggles upon the non-White body that is most of the globe. The idea of a cosmic slave hole lends to the idea of an outer body, non-human element of description. The cosmic, the galaxy, the unexplored universe is central when examining how the Black body is in a state that has no beginning and end, a hole. The soul in soul music is this cosmic slave hole. The limbo state of the Black consciousness. Music is influential in altering our state of wellbeing, this state which music can bring us into can be referred to as a cosmic hole. Weheliye’s concept of the vocoder bringing a non-human element to the voice of the artist may stem from the concept that the vocoder is a device to elevate the voice to a realm that is post- and prehuman. The concept of the soul in reference to it being a cosmic slave hole intersects with how the soul in soul music is a representation of the socially oppressed human being. The cosmic slave hole, the Black body, and its struggle to be heard beyond the limitations of the ‘human’, the western gaze. How one interprets music, whether it be for pleasure or leisure, is an important aspect of examining how the soul in soul music may represent the oppressed politically. Using Wynter’s rethinking aesthetics in film criticism lends itself to the aesthetics of soul music. This rethinking, decipherment of aesthetics of the global popular imagination, lends itself to how one may view the listener of soul music as deriving a pleasure associated with an imaginary European humanism (Wynter, 1992, p. 239). The idea

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of a soul in soul music can be visual in addition to an audible imagination of what is ‘Blackness’ in the Black body performing soul music. Wynter’s examination of how the battle of the cultural imaginary proposed by European humanism is tied to a physical and organic reality is inherently linked to how one perceives and consumes music and the pleasure derived from it. The idea of a soul in soul music is contextual when placed beside aesthetics of human life. The body whether it is White, or non-White may potentially be listening to soul music through a specific Eurocentric system of knowledge to self-explain the explanation of deriving pleasure from music. However, Wynter’s notion of the cultural imaginary, when coupled with the idea that the soul is not human, can be the beginning of deciphering and rethinking how the aesthetics of how we find pleasure in soul music is connected to a deeper understanding of trying to define the soul in soul music. The oppressed body sheds its politically oppressed ‘human’ body and extends it to represent the soul in soul music. The politically oppressed, using soul music, redefines the ‘sound’ of struggle. Clyde Taylor expresses this in this quote from Wynter’s article: The effectiveness of repressed people in the communications struggle, either as senders or receivers through systems influenced by the hierarchy (the “image hierarchy” and “ideological contours of representation” of what Michel Foucault calls “power/knowledge”), depends on their realization of the obsolescence of the contest over the nature of truth beside the contest over the control of truth, and the irrelevance of ‘beauty’ beside the power to choose and name beauty. From the beginning, the question of aesthetics is always a non-dialogue between those who subscribe to the conditioned world order and those who stand to gain from a reconstructed forum. (Wynter, 1992, p. 237)

The soul in soul music thus stems from a place that transcends logic as the ‘rational’ man, which is steeped in American-European systems of enlightenment. Gaztambibe-Fernandez examines the artist and the art they create in the popular imagination of what constitutes genius in art. Music is an art form performed by an artist that seeks to carry a message whether it’s for leisure-pleasure or a psychological journey of what represents a dimension of expectation of pleasure. The artist is defined by underlying assumptions of the given use of the word culture and how it generates particular views of the artist. If the artist in music is a cultural figure, what legitimizes the aesthetics of soul music in culture?

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Using Gaztambibe-Fernandez’s (2008) notion of the separation between the genius and the scope of scientific and rational logic, the analysis of the soul could be rooted in the modern conception of liberal humanism views of what defines scientific logic in relation to defining the soul in the artist. Furthermore, examining how the soul in soul music may represent the politically oppressed Black body may be examined in culture. If the notion of soul music is connected to the artist and the songs they produce, culture plays a significant role in how the artist is constructed in the public imagination. Gaztambibe-Fernandez (2008) theorizes that the artist has three roles in society—cultural civilizer, border crosser, and representator (Gaztambibe-Fernandez, 2008, p.  236). All three categories view the artist as an agent playing an active role in society or a type of cultural worker; more importantly specific institutions mediate the role of the artist in society (Ibid., 2008, p. 240). Fernandez examines how the contemporary public imagines artists as entertainers and expects them to arouse their senses and provide experiences that trigger the emotions in extraordinary ways. The soul music artist is playing an active role. Although it is not upon us to define the artists’ motives for creating genres of music, we may address soul music as a way for the artist to challenge the public to think in new and different ways and to inspire intellectual dialogue. The imagery of the artist in music is someone with talent; the notion of talent may be in the public’s imagination as one who reflects the idiosyncratic ‘colourful and eccentric’ view that frames the artist. However, this view is constructed within cultural and historical conditions, and individuals are recognized/labelled as artist when they fit typologies that are culturally and historically relevant (Ibid., 2008, p. 237). For the artist that produces soul music, there is a certain typecast that is confined within the boundaries of what is the ‘Black’ body experience. Hence one may argue that the soul in soul music is the Black bodies’ historical and cultural typologies that are associated with Black people in America, because the views of the artist performing/creating are shaped by discursive practices. These discursive practices in the public imagination assume certain expectations about what artist should contribute to society. An example can be derived from the soul music artist rendered as a body in constant struggle for equality, redemption (gospel music), love, appreciation, and liberty. Within the confines of what the soul musician should contribute to society through this genre of music is an extension of

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how soul music is legitimized in the popular imagination of expectations of pleasure when consuming the music. The soul in soul music may be the very definition of having no ‘public imagination’. A gateway to a space that is beyond the cultural discourses that are shaped by the historical and cultural discourses of the English enlightenment, which were developed by philosophers associated with liberal humanism. Fernandez describes liberal humanism as placing humans at the centre of history and holds that only through the advancement of their potential can humans achieve full civilization and control nature to serve their needs (Gaztambibe-­ Fernandez, 2008, p. 237). This notion of liberal humanism pivots humans as the creators, whereas the soul in soul music is non-human; hence the soul may be a platform for the oppressed spirit to express their desires against the confinements of a political system not created to serve their needs. If the soul is non-human, perhaps the pre- and posthuman element draws one to analyse how, for the artist, identification plays a role in trying to decipher what the soul is. Looking at issues of identification, one may examine how the soul artist is deemed invisible economically, leading to an oppressed state of consciousness in the Black subject. West notes that the ‘Modern Black diaspora problematic of invisibility and namelessness’ stems from Black bodies being viewed as a commodity with production value (West, 1990, p. 100). I question if the soul can even be identified; if that is the case, is the ‘soul’ a commodity, or is it invisible? If soul music is a commodity, is the Black body that creates, sings, and listens to soul music invisible or vice versa? Is there a Black soul versus a nonblack soul? Examining West’s modern Black diasporic problems of namelessness, perhaps the soul in soul music is a departure of invisibility, and the Black body is a derivative of the soul. This state of namelessness and invisibility of the Black body stems from what West argues as White supremacist practices—enacted under the auspices of the prestigious cultural authorities of the churches, print media, and scientific academics, which promote Black inferiority and constitute the European background against which the Black diaspora struggles for identity, dignity, and material resources (West, 1990, p. 102). This identity of the Black body, the identity of the Black soul musician, struggles against the backdrop of political, economic, and social oppression as West quotes:

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The modern Black diaspora problematic of invisibility and namelessness can be understood as the condition of relative lack of Black power to present themselves and others as complex human beings, and thereby to contest the bombardment of negative, degrading stereotypes put forward by White supremacist ideologies. (West, 1990, p. 102)

West’s quote beautifully illustrates this struggle for the Black diaspora body to examine ways to self-represent as human beings without the confinements of White supremacist ideologies, the soul in soul music. One must be careful not to appropriate the soul in soul music to be the social and psychic erasure of simplistic binary oppositions of right/wrong, good/bad that privilege a White norm, because the notion of a soul in soul music will remain inscribed within the very logic that dehumanized Black bodies. One must reinvent new systems of logic. Identity discourse is significant when trying to analyse what is the soul in soul music. The identity of the artist and the ones listening and consuming the music are wrapped in ideologies of identity. The soul in soul music may not have an identity. However, the Black body performing the ‘soul’ in soul music has markers of Euro-American subjectivity of enlightenment. Gilroy asks the question of whether the supposedly authentic, natural identity is based on the premise of a ‘thinking’ racial self that is socialized and connected with other bodies within the fortified frontiers of ethnic cultures (Gilroy, 1991, p. 5). Black political, economic, and social struggles are intertwined with the idea of the nation and the bodies’ connection to this notion. Soul music when examining through the lens of Black bodies that have struggled to mark an identity within the racialized consciousness leads me to question whether the Black artistic sensibility is located within a condition of exile, the diasporic body. This concept ties into Weheliye’s cosmic slave hole. The soul in soul music may be part of this condition of exile, and therefore the soul may be an illusion—an imaginary body in a limbo state constantly running from the clutches of exile. Gilroy examines how the Black body is a signifier that is loosely internally divided (Gilroy, 1991, p. 6). The soul is a signifier of the body it encompasses. However, the Black body in soul music is merely an extension of an illusion of Euro-American subjectivity. The Black body is a subject of the nation, where identity is derived from and stems from Euro-American subjectivity. Therefore, one must note that the non-White subject is oppressed through the state as Spivak articulates:

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The reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also a reproduction of its submission to the ruling ideology for the workers, and a reproduction of the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression, so that they, too, will provide for the domination of the ruling class in and by words. (Gayatri, Macmillan: 1988, p. 68)

The soul in soul music may be an extension of the oppressed non-White body while also being an extension of neither White nor non-White bodies. One must be aware that the state regulates its subjects and influences the subject’s belief systems of thought. Hence, to identify and label what the soul is would be subjected to within the ruling ideology. The soul may be an illusion; it is pre- and posthuman, beyond our comprehension. Walcott refers to the term ‘elsewhereness’, the imagined diaspora collective history. This state of ‘elsewhereness’ is the demand of the nation state for Black people to belong elsewhere (Walcott, 2001, p. 126). The ‘soul’ is a state of elsewhereness, a collective imagination to remove the subject from the confines of definitions and labels. Admittedly, speaking from how the soul in soul music is a platform to express the oppression on the Black body is labelled in non-White identity when it is compared to White identity politics. This is problematic because this limits the scope which the subaltern, the non-White body, can move beyond oppression. Perhaps one should question the idea of identity as Michael Omi and Howard Winant say that identity/race are understood as an ideological concept, understood in the sense of an ‘illusion’ that explains other ‘material’ relationships in a distorted fashion (Omi & Winant, 1993, p. 4). Therefore, if race is not genetically programmed, the soul in soul music cannot be genetically programmed. Perhaps examining Rollefson’s analysis on Afrofuturism and its intersectionality of technology, science and race may offer a perspective when examining the non-human element of what makes a soul a soul. Rollefson’s analysis of how Black science fiction reflects a posthumanism not mired in White subjectivity leads one to argue how science fiction could offer an alternative definition of how the soul in soul music could be Afrofuturistic, since the soul is inherently non-human (Rollefson, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2008, p. 86). If the idea of Afrofuturism relies on the disparity between blackness and the cybernetic technological future, the soul in soul music may be the departure or the end of where Afrofuturism contains its relativity in the Black body (Rollefson, 2008, p. 87). An example is the subgenre of soul

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music called blue-eyed soul, with White bodies performing soul music. This essay will not debate whether White soul artists have a soul in their creation of music, but rather question the notion of a race on the soul. The soul is non-human; therefore the soul in soul music is the past and the future at the same time, having no afrological base. Stewart’s analysis on Afro-post modernism lends the term afrological when we think of how we understand musical belief systems (Stewart, 2010, p. 337). Systems of logic grounded in behavioural ways of listening to music ‘logically’. Stewart’s argument of how afrological refers to historically emergent rather than ethnically essential logic essentially confines the Black body historically (Stewart, 2010, p.  339). If the soul in soul music is the past, future, and present regardless of its roots in gospel, jazz, and rhythm and blues, one may argue that the soul in soul music may have no afrological base. Afrological because the fluidity of music production through race, culture, gender, and sexuality may hold no historical emergent theme when one breaks down how we logically think of how we define the soul. The idea of logic, afrological, is to believe in something that is correct, rational, right, wrong, etc. One must not believe in anything when trying to comprehend what the soul is in soul music because once you believe in something, logic, you are precluded from believing in its opposite. Hence, the soul is a gateway, a border crosser of an alternative logic of what constitutes the ‘human’ definition of logic.

Conclusion This chapter has proposed what the soul in soul music is by concluding that there is no known definition of what the soul is. However, soul music is a cultural product, and one must always question the one gazing at and consuming cultural products, us, in addition to who creates the products. We must question who is invited to these spaces to gaze, consume, and create, and who is represented and who is not. Most importantly what does this say about society and relationships of power. As scholars, we ask ourselves these questions, and we engage in a systematic activity to collect information to arrive at generalizations (theory) to arrive at a phenomenon of explanation. Possibly the system used to explain, analyse, and examine identity and what the soul is in soul music, and the intersections of oppression must be redefined to move past oppression and, more importantly, define the soul.

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The dominance of western knowledge systems and English speech is problematic when it is the only or main tool this essay is using for theoretical examination of comprehending what the soul is in soul music; the master’s tool cannot dismantle the master’s house as Audre Lorde famously wrote. More importantly, when the interests of the dominant class are served at the expense of others, its ramifications perpetuate beyond consuming and defining cultural products. Economically, politically, and socially under­ developed non-White bodies remain subordinates of American and European hegemony, leading to a cyclical propaganda of cultural imperialism. The soul in soul music is beyond understanding identity, oppression, race, belief systems, logic, and aesthetics as one knows it; rather the soul is beyond comprehension because the soul is immortal and it is an immaterial collection of our human existence, a cosmic hole.

References Alcoff, L. (1991). The problem of speaking for others. In J. Roof & R. Wiegman (Eds.), Who can speak? Authority and critical identity. University of Illinois Press. Gaztambibe-Fernandez, R.  A. (2008). The artist in society: Understandings, expectations, and curriculum implications. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(3), 233–265. Gilroy, P. (1991). It ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at… The dialectics of diasporic identification. Third Text, 5(13), 3–16. Miller, J. (Ed.). (1976). The rolling stone illustrated history of Rock & Roll (pp. 194–197). Rolling Stone Press/Random House. Chapter on “Soul,” by Guralnick, Peter. Nourbese Philip. (1998). Black W/Holes: A history of brief time. Fuse Magazine, Part one. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1993). On the theoretical status of the concept of race. In C.  McCarthy & W.  Crichlow (Eds.), Race, identity and representation in education (pp. 3–10). Routledge. Spivak, G. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In Nelson & Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 66–111). Macmillan. Stewart, J. (2010). DJ Spooky and the politics of Afro-Postmodernism. Black Music Research Journal, 30(2), 337–361. The “Robot Voodoo Power” Thesis: Afrofuturism and Anti-Anti-Essentialism from Sun Ra to Kool Keith Author(s): J. Griffith Rollefson Black Music Research Journal, 28(1), Becoming: Blackness and the Musical Imagination (Spring, 2008), pp. 83–109. Walcott, R. (2001). Caribbean pop culture in Canada: Or the impossibility of belonging to the nation. Small Axe, 5(1), 123–139.

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Weheliye, A. G. (2002). “Feenin”: Posthuman voices in contemporary black popular music. Social Text, 20(2), 21–47. West, C. (1992). The new cultural politics of difference. In Out there: Marginalization and contemporary cultures, ed. R.  Ferguson, M.  Gever, T. T. Minh-Ha, & S. Wynter. Rethinking “Aesthetics”: Notes towards a deciphering practice. Ex-iles: Essays on Caribbean cinema (pp. 237–279). West, M. J. (1990). Unbiased stereological estimation of the number of neurons in the human hippocampus. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 296(1), 1–22.

CHAPTER 14

Kumina: Kumina! Afro-Jamaican Religion, Education, and Practice: A Site Where Afrocentricity, ‘Bodily Knowledge’, and Spiritual Interconnection Are Activated, Negotiated, and Embodied Tanitiã Munroe

Introduction As a Black Queer immigrant woman from the Caribbean and a doctoral student, I often find myself enmeshed in dominant Eurocentric knowledge that did not locate my history or identity, as I progress through the ranks of academic achievement. Discomforts about the exclusive nature of some of what I have learned and whose histories got positioned and erased under Black studies varied from topic, professors, and classroom spaces. It became clear that many Black academics were also trapped in their own

T. Munroe (*) Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_14

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contradictions and elitism in Canada. I felt my own identity and that of my region had been robbed of earning its place among the pages of curriculum, theorizing, and in conversations among academics and students. Many of the same scholars that called for Black studies and theorizing situated Black literature—Black Life—Black realities through their gaze on North America. So, thinking about the ways knowledge enables Black women to disrupt, act, and move in the world, the pressures to soldier on without resistance are even harder to ignore. Particularly, one key epistemological concern facing Black women in academia is the question of “what constitutes adequate justifications that a given knowledge claim, such as a fact or theory, is true” (Collins, 2002). Since the traditional epistemological stance is not helpful in articulating Black women’s consciousness, I remain compelled to push back to reframe the stories birthed out of the Caribbean. There is and always will be a need for theory to grow out of Black women’s own lives and respond to our own culture and experiences. Black feminist scholars, activists, and authors have always articulated an alternative way of producing and validating knowledge claims consistent with Black women’s criteria (James, 2014; Dei, 2012; Davies, 1994; McDowell, 1995). Black women’s lived experiences are more credible and believable than those who merely read or think about such experiences. These experiences that Black women share and pass on become a collective wisdom and form the basis for Black women’s standpoint (Collins, 2002). The knowledge claims rest in Black women themselves and not a higher authority. For example, they rest in community, located in storytelling or co-constructed shared knowledge passed down in family settings. Drawing out and deconstructing the colonial roots of what is considered ‘knowledge’ permit Black women to explore alternative frameworks that do not succumb to the dominance of Euro-Western knowledge. To prove this point, I will analyze an African dance tradition, Kumina, and demonstrate how it serves as a basis for Afro-Caribbean-centered epistemology and transmission of culture among Jamaican people. This Afro-­ Jamaican dance practice stems directly from the religion-cultural and spiritual traditions that made its journey from the Congo, West Central Africa. Kumina serves as an agent of history, a retainer of traditions that are constantly evolving in nature, while offering up cultural and social realities experienced by its actors. Located simultaneously inside and outside Western modernity and aesthetics, Afro-Caribbean women have used dance to continually represent and reinvent their multiple bases of

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identity—physically, emotionally, and intellectually as their life and thoughts are rearticulated through the complex and intersectional. Traditional dance is a shared communal knowledge and experience that connects individuals to one another, society, and nature. The spiritual aspect of the dances is anchored in this communality. As Mabingo (2015) has noted, the dances “fuel a sense of self-vitality and community solidarity, which can usher in a sense of spiritual well-being in the body … and unleash energy that extends beyond a single dancer or musician to exhilarate an entire social environment” (p.  169). Because women are the knowledge custodians of the Kumina culture, of its esoteric meaning and religious rituals, Kumina queens are granted unwavering respect within their communities for their multiple roles as psychologists, doctors, priests, and judges (Stewart, 2004). Kumina queens take on tremendous responsibility for managing and facilitating harmony and well-being in their communities as they serve people from diverse backgrounds and regions of the country. Black Jamaican women who dance and perform Kumina have always found widespread yet compromised visibility in the larger society, which customarily seeks cultural and theological distance from much of what the Kumina queens represent.

Defining Kumina At Kumina dance gatherings, the spirits who are called often make their presence known by ‘mounting’ (i.e., possessing) a dancer—whose given dance style helps in identifying the spirit but can span all possibilities of movement. The basic dance posture constitutes an almost erect back and propelling actions of the hips as the feet inch along the ground. The dancers move in a circular (anti-clockwise) pattern around the musicians and center pole, either singly or with a partner. The arms, shoulders, ribcage, and hips are employed, offering the dancers ample opportunity for variations and interpretations of the counter-beats or polyrhythms. Spins, dips, and ‘breaks’ on the last beat are common dance variations. Kumina is a religious group, which originated in West Africa and was brought to Jamaica by Africans who arrived between the 1840s and 1860s (Jamaica Information Service, n.d.). According to Olive Lewin, Kumina expresses the strongest African retention of Jamaican folk culture and provides powerful clues about the religious and social customs of the African ancestry (Lewin, 2000). As a ‘Jamaican cultural practice’, it has no founder, no central reformer, nor a series of reformers. Its functional form is based

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mainly on oral transmission and performance of its instrumentation and song (Davy, 2018). As a cultural tradition Kumina is not scripted. Its teachings are recorded in oral history, rituals, and functions of its adherents (Lewin, 2000). Linguistic evidence cites the Kongo as a specific ethnic source for the ‘language’ and possibly the music of Kumina (Brathwaite, 2005). The three most important elements in a Kumina session are dancing, singing, and drumming. The drums are believed to be the most important because of the control they have over the spirits (Lewin, 2000). Despite having followers and practitioners, Kumina has no evangelical missionaries or even the desire to propagate itself (Davy, 2018). It does not even make any attempts to proselytize for converts. Life-long ‘Kumina adherents’ are loyal worshippers (Brathwaite, 2005). Those who have their roots in Kumina find it extremely difficult to sever connections with it (Awolalu, 1976).

Kumina Drumming Kumina drumming is perhaps the most semantically and rhythmically complex in Jamaica. The sacred kbandu (medium straddled single-headed ‘male’ talking drum) and kyas drums (small straddled single-headed ‘female’ talking drum) enter quasi-lexical conversations, with pitch adjusted by the heels of the drummers, and can express an enormous and sophisticated catalogue of orally transmitted calls-and-responses for communicating with specific ancestral spirits based on the speech patterns of ancient languages (Jamaica Information Service, n.d.). The complex patterning of ‘Kumina-drumming’ fiercely contested the nature of the enslaved African’s unfreedom (Davy, 2018). This stimulated a reconfiguration of culture and memory. Kumina’s ‘talking drums’ represent a reconstitution of a collective African-Atlantic cultural identity-­ rhizome (Lewin, 2000) as an “alternative ‘natural’ hierarchy” (Gilroy, 2000, p. 200). It positioned ‘African identity’ beyond the order, terrors, and reach of institutionalized slavery. It disrupted the attempt to erase ‘African identity’ and memory (Gilroy, 2000). Kumina Music and Dance For African people in Jamaica, traditional dances have always been used as the mode of cultural memory to recall and remember that which has been encouraged to be forgotten during enslavement and colonization. As

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McDowell (1995) suggests, remembering is political and inextricably bound to culturally contested issues are now granted as freely as the understanding that why we remember and what we remember, the motive and the content, are inseparable. African dance became the living memorial which many Afro-Jamaicans fashioned as their answer to their ancestors’ past, their source of healing and recognition of each other as shipmates on the long voyage to citizenship and reaffirming their African identity (Davy, 2018). In small doses, they were able to bypass, subvert, and even transgress the prescribed codes of canonized cultural subordination. Kumina’s music, dance, and other recreational practices expressed enslaved women’s desire to “exercise autonomous power in the body” (Gilroy, 2000, p. 200). While they frequently bore the brunt of all extremely violent forms of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. The reconstitution of the feminine spirit became evident in the practice of Kumina, “because women are the keepers of the ‘Kumina-culture’ and of its esoteric meaning and religious ritual. Kumina tradition remained a protest any glorification of female suffering” (Stewart, 2004, p. 163). The survival of such traditions was “the clearest testimony to their strength and creativity” (Wynter, 1970, p. 36) and has always been done by asserting the enslaved women’s dignity and humanity against colonial oppression. Although the contributions of enslaved women were effectively erased during slavery in colonial Jamaica and “effectively silenced, if not erased” (Paquet, 2002, p. 11). It is the enslaved women that created a “strong culture of resistance before and after emancipation” (Allahar, 2005, p. 127).

Imogene ‘Queenie’ Kennedy There are socio-cultural traditions and trends, constructed, reconstructed, and transmitted between generations throughout history based on virtually infinite factors that contribute to the development of any social group’s way of encoding their experience into memory or forming knowledge. With Jamaican independence came a growing recognition of the importance of African folkways and roots. The Jamaican Festival of Arts was created by Edward Seaga in 1963 to expose the orally culturally transmitted traditions (Jamaica Information Service, n.d.). Here, I introduce Ms. Imogene ‘Queenie’ Kennedy, a second-generation African, born in the late 1920s in Jamaica. Her entrance into the world of the Kumina religion is documented in Olive Lewin’s book, Rock It Come Over: The Folk Music of Jamaica (Lewin, 2000). Her involvement in African

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culture was influenced by her maternal grandparents who were enslaved West Central Africans brought to work on sugar estates (Lewin, 2000). Queenie’s experience of Kumina derived largely from ceremonies held by a neighbor, “Man” Parker, and her uncle, Clifford Flemming, was an adherent of Flenkey (or Bongo or Convince), a cult of ancestor communication (Jamaica Information Service, n.d.). It was common for Queenie to steal away to the Kumina sessions held next door as her interest increased.

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Queenie’s ascendance as Kumina Queen was a result of a life-changing experience. While searching for coconuts in a gully, Queenie describes spirits taking her to a large, hollow cotton tree where she stayed 21 days without food or water, hanging upside down, communicating with the ancestral spirits who taught her prayers and songs in the Kikongo African language (Lewin, 2000). From that epiphany, she became a Kumina queen, a contemporary priestess who catapulted her African spiritual practice into popular culture and international notoriety. One of the salient characteristics of her story remains how she oriented individual actors into communities of practice and freedom of expression. Queenie used Kumina as a means of inventory to deposit the history of the Jamaican people. Standing less than 5 feet tall, her voice was heard over the radio “with its first characteristics long note (Aaay.quali..quali) growing through a chant into a song and rising loud and clear over the drums and percussion instruments playing in the background” (Lewin, 2000, p. 71). Her voice—from way inside the soul, not just her lungs—bellowed from somewhere beyond, with a projected resonance that established connections with spiritual kin and believers-receivers of Ancestral calls. Queenie did more than gain widespread respect for African-based traditions, for people like herself with limited formal education. She led the way in the development of Afro-Jamaican dance and music epistemology, which was displayed in her performance. Her body assumed a central position in nurturing the experiences and revealing and distributing knowledge. When she danced, her feet moved with such pace, balance, grace, and motion as to seem to hover. It is within these motions, struggle, and contradiction between past and present, form and content, tradition and cultural revolution were captured. She became a conduit for communication and knowledge and carrier of information through community gatherings, conversations, and songs while “sharing of ritualized and spiritual traditions” (Dillard, 2006). Queenie’s performance attracted scholars from across the African continent and pan-Africanist in the Caribbean (Lewin, 2000). For example, Kwabena Nketia of Ghana, John Akbar of Sierra Leone, Chief Fela Sowande of Nigeria, and Edward Brathwaite of Barbados produced scholarships on Queenie’s Kumina dance and linguistic expression (Lewin, 2000). Each observer and scholar in their work noted the continuity in this dance as a mode of African cultural expression while opposing the much-contested Cartesian separation of body and mind in Western

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discourse of knowledge production. The movements of Kumina dance when Queenie performed did not float about in incorporate space, they acquired substance through drumming and communication with the spirits.

Spirituality and Identity Afro-Caribbean ‘wisdom traditions’ are steeped in spirituality and are defined within the framework of myth, mysticism, sagacity, and proverbial discourses that are structured elements in African cultural systems. One of the most powerful uses of African and Caribbean spirituality is the way rituals, practices, and gatherings were utilized to strategize against colonizing oppressive forces. Trinidadian Burton Sankarilli describes traditional dance in the Caribbean as being dominated by a “metaphysical pattern embodied as actual ancestral community through tortuous history” (Sankeralli, 2001, p. 6). This tortuous history grounded Caribbean people with the knowledge carried through the memory of the body and through dance and religion. The power of African traditional dances such as Kumina dramatized and ridiculed the Eurocentric and colonized approach to being. Through its moves and songs, it criticized and subverted and, in fact, dancing Kumina represented the clearest expression of an alternative. Kumina dance, both sacred and profane, served to maintain and revitalize the link with ancestral spirits and the lost African continent (Kremser, 1993, pp. 93–101). For their very survival, the enslaved Africans had to dance to the whip during the Middle Passage. By dancing, African ascendants in Jamaica re-enact their ancestor’s abduction, oppression, exploitation, and imposed self-alienation, and move toward a future of reconnection, freedom, and identity. Kumina also signifies the potency and resiliency of African wisdom. Enslaved Africans did not surrender their souls even under chattel slavery and were able to retain their spiritual connection to the motherland through dance and songs. The rites of memory performed by Kumina dancers such as Queenie often consider the roles played by her predecessors. The relationship she held with the songs and the movement was often a reproduction or recreation of kinaesthetic memory passed on by former enslaved Afro-Jamaicans. The dissolution of the self or estrangement from ancestral land necessarily precedes “the achievement of a full, restored, and authentic identity” held out by return (Hartman, 2002). Thus, performing Kumina evolved from

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a process of ‘surrogation’ to imaginatively fill the cavities created by loss through death or other forms of departure that is told through the drumming and songs. It mediates this diasporic identification with Africa and accentuates what Hartman (2002) would describe as the essential constituent of diasporic identity—“the rupture between me and my origins” (Hartman, 2002). Kumina integrates a variety of African cultural traditions and “if Kumina possesses a single most important organizing principle, it is the continuity between the ancestral dead and their living progeny” (Coester & Bender, 2015, p. 475). Yet if this rupture engenders diasporic identity, then the search for roots can only exacerbate one’s sense of being estranged, intensify the exilic consciousness, and confirm the impossibility of reversion (Hartman, 2002). Thus, it is in the tradition of African cosmology, where the living dead become our ancestors; these are the ones we can remember. This linkage “makes the dead integral to both social organization and political mobilization, and therefore vital to historic transformation” (Brown, 2008, p. 6). There are ways that spirituality reveals itself in these spaces where Kumina is performed—oftentimes not in an overt fashion, but through the rhythm and movement of the dancers like Queenie in space, the drumming activities, and the sharing of energy that lend itself to be more spiritual than it seemed to onlookers. Erna Brodber (1989) in her novel, Myal, attempts the repositioning of African diasporic religious traditions as a central element in the Afro-Caribbean cultural matrix. Through her work, Brodber’s excavation of an African/Afro-Caribbean metaphysics serves as the primary metaphor of liberation that demonstrates the reassertion of African epistemologies disavowed within Westernist systems of knowledge (Brodber, 1989). There is a radical literary aesthetic, positing these traditions as the basis for the recuperation of the Afrodiasporan self through spirituality. Its central importance is in redefining the Afro-Caribbean subject in terms that deconstruct the colonial legacies of anti-African-ness and acknowledge spiritual intelligence as a bona fide epistemological source. Kumina became part of that epistemological ecosystem that integrates experience, people, and culture (Mabingo, 2015). The performances yielded concrete experience. Forms of embodied and reflective constructions of movement ideas into practical and conscious realities were pursued. The dimension of spirituality in Queenie’s knowledge of the movements provided the strength and power needed in physical communication. As it was, something became expressive and narrative for her, the

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practice of remembering through dance leads to the formation of politicized consciousness of African knowledge and spirituality. Queenie’s artistic expression was grounded in people and a place—and memory of our homeland (Nettleford, 1985).

Locating Women as Knowledge Producers Through Dance Though we have come a long way from wholesale acceptance of canons of truth, what constitutes ‘valid’ theoretical and empirical knowledge has today become a point of contention for many. In the knowledge-­producing sector, we can see the imperial attempts to gain control over the production of knowledge and over what was being transmitted to the rising generations (Henry, 2016). To date, albeit in small bites, the criteria for evaluating and interpreting what is considered knowledge have been questioned and this has informed my thinking about the concepts of legitimacy and representation. Linking Afro-Atlantic religion with the corporeal intellect inherent in sacred dance, Yvonne Daniel’s “Rhythmic Remembrances” explicates how African-originated valuations of rhythm and ritual have persisted in the African diaspora, particularly in the “danced, sung, and drummed knowledge” that survived New World slavery. Daniel (2010) points out that although the general objectives of such rituals are to gain personal strength, achieve spiritual balance, worship divinities, and maintain the solidarity of the ritual community, some of their effects include the awareness of the “stored knowledge” within the human body and the discovery of the vast knowledge that still exists within the rituals of African diasporic religious performance (Daniel, 2010). To speak of Kumina as a means of transmitting knowledge is to articulate questions about local cultures and social identities. Kumina, when performed, has moral and cognitive conceptions about nature and society that may be compatible with Western scientific knowledge. To shift my focus on Afro-Caribbean women post- and pre-­ emancipation, my designation to situate them as knowledge producers is based on a historically and culturally as well as theoretically informed understanding. Speaking about “Black women’s collective struggle”, of which she felt her experiences and theorizations are symbolic, it functions to clear conceptual and theoretical space for the soundings of Black women’s experiences and at the same time demands a hearing for Black

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woman-centered knowledges (Stines, 2005; Spillers, 1987). Collins (1997, 1998, 2000) argues that because of their position within the intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, and class, Black women as a group possess a “unique angle of vision” on the social world. It becomes not so much highlighting the importance of decolonizing the Western concept of learning but engaging with other methods which has historically and systematically been marginalized, silenced, stereotyped, dislocated, and decentered all other knowledge systems. Epistemological considerations in Black feminist theorizing no longer mean merely developing knowledge about women, in which women feature as the objects of knowledge; they also involve an understanding of the subjective process whereby women understand, create, and use knowledge. This implies understanding Black women as the subjects of knowledge, in the sense of being subject to and shaped by the social forces constituting forms of knowledge, as well as intentionally creating and using new forms of knowledge to transform those social forces. In rhythmic rituals, Queenie’s dancing reinforces memory and enables, as well as retains, “the embodiment of all sorts of knowledges—over centuries and across geographies” (Daniel, 2010). The accumulation of knowledge in Queenie’s ritual practice and the transposition and application of that knowledge to social life yielded the wisdom within the dancing religions or embodied knowledges. The dance experiences, according to Daniel (2010), aimed to humanize the dance participants by inviting them to process dance as an experiential and spiritual process that connects the inner being of the person to their outer environment—people, nature, history, and culture. It became an extension of embodied and reflective kinaesthetic output where the dances were embodied and shared forms of knowing, becoming, thinking, and doing (Daniel, 2010). The body sits between the mind and matter (Mabingo, 2015) as knowledge exists in corporeal and non-corporeal forms. Since the traditional epistemological stance is not helpful in articulating Black women’s consciousness, an alternative way of producing and validating knowledge claims consistent with Black women’s criteria—based on the lived experiences of Black women. Black women’s lived experiences are more credible and believable than those who merely read or think about such experiences. These experiences that Black women share and pass on become a collective wisdom and form the basis for Black women’s standpoint (Collins, 2002). These knowledge claims rest in the women themselves and not a higher authority. For, what would it mean to

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theorize about the lives of ordinary Black women across the diaspora? What would it mean to confer power to those who speak in muted tones? Thus, by sourcing from memory and the unspeakable teachings of the Afro-Caribbean women through dance, music, and spirituality, this allows me to reclaim feminism away from the exclusive territories and policing of academia. Ancestral memory in dance and music is something I constantly find myself fascinated by for what does it mean for cultural and knowledge holders like Queenie to remember those who not only lived before her but further continue to evade materiality? If we are to create relevant scholarship in Black and Afro-Caribbean diasporic knowledge systems, we must also consider the metaphysical in the constitution of power and pay attention to the ways in which spirituality informs the process of our knowledge production. To honor the sensual and abstract potential of Afro-Caribbean women as disrupting these battles of what constitutes knowledge is also speaking back at the ways in which these accumulative and dis-­accumulative dynamics enable us to account for the rise in power, dominance, ‘credibility’, and status of Western epistemologies. Black feminist-centered epistemology holds the role of women members of local communities, such as elders, as a key component of pedagogy. Through an impressive range of continuity of cultural retention, traditional knowledge, and local knowledge systems have been defined as dynamic and complex bodies of know-how, practices, and skills that are developed and sustained by peoples/communities with shared histories and experiences. Those exploded moments of teaching and performance by Queenie, transferred knowledge and history, held time and space captive to an instance of interconnectedness, which was enacted by the insistence to teach and effectively liberate even through the very trenches of institutional violence and exclusion. Each context, song, move, or technique passed along by knowledge keepers in her family was retained through generations and in communities across Jamaica. The songs of Kumina tell the stories through the BaKongo languages and a second set of songs called ‘Bailo’ which is sung in Jamaican creole. These songs pay homage to African ancestors, while others describe customary pastimes or rites of passage such as deaths, births, and weddings. These embodied aspects come to conceptually overwrite what these theorists and creatives may voice in the fullness of its multiplicity and diversity. Much in the same way that the Black female body “breaks in upon the [social] imagination” in a manner that figuratively overwhelms and mutes

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these women’s insights, as their very bodies-as-flesh denote “disruption” and “illegitimacy” (Collins, 2002). As the late Professor Rex Nettleford, scholar, dancer, choreographer, and orator, stated, “to dance Kumina is to engage the consciousness” (Nettleford, 1985). Dance occupies a physical and metaphysical world and is a formulation of knowledge (e.g., knowledge as superstition, knowledge as a belief in the invisible order of things) that also provides interpretations and understandings of society. Dance knowledge is a constructed reality. As an interceder, dance links individuality to the community and human imagination to the bodily subject matter (Mabingo, 2015). It requires the entire body, which dancers use to interpret their everyday lives and experiences. Using Kumina is a site of African historical consciousness where the experience of enslavement is remembered through the natural terrain: the mountains where the Maroons sought refuge; in the sanctuary of the forest where healing power is stored in every plant, bush, and tree and every stream and river that Kumina dancers collect water to pour libations for the ancestors that crossed shallow streams or deep rivers and made the journey across the middle passage. The body develops its own language to express the owner’s thoughts and feelings through music/rhythm and song. As with any other form of African Indigenous knowledge, it includes concepts, beliefs, perceptions, and experiences of local environments, both social and natural. Kumina invokes ancestral movements that are a resistance to Eurocentric ideology, anti-Blackness and anti-African-ness. We learn a great deal about ourselves post slavery, about Jamaica, about the Caribbean, the African diaspora, and about Afro-Jamaican women’s identity through dances such as Kumina (Nettleford, 1985). Using African dance as a means of theorizing and a creative way to produce knowledge, Rex Nettleford and other cultural Anthropologists understood the aesthetics voiced from this inner landscape of Queenie’s performance. In his opinion, he made it clear that Kumina dance allowed for inclusive dialogue and involved critical thinking (Nettleford, 1985). To focus on Afro-Caribbean knowledge through dances such as Kumina is to develop a critical epistemology to account for the production and validation of critical knowledge for decolonization purposes. It begins to rupture normalized categories of what constitutes valid/invalid knowledge and simultaneously to recognize that all knowledge can be contested in terms of boundaries and spaces.

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Conclusion Religion, dance, and music have from the very beginning of the colonial contact been integral to the process of African identity formation and knowledge production. Whether scorned as a primitive, unrefined expression, employed as a medium of covert resistance, or hailed as the highest tangible manifestation of Indigenous cultural beliefs, dance has been, and remains, a powerful focal point in conversations about the retention of African culture in Jamaica. The power of Kumina dance can dramatize and speak back to events and history, and it criticizes and subverts colonial traps that continue to displace the bodies (of African knowledge) out to the margins. Kumina is a site of epistemology and pedagogy—to look at not (only) as part of an African religious ritual (altar-making, sacrifices, possession and divination, and other religious practices) but as a site of gaze and study. All these historical imaginaries influence the ways in which Jamaicans who practice this cultural tradition currently interface with Kumina dance. Kumina challenges the contrived selective memories Afro-Jamaicans have been conditioned to retain regarding the country’s religious and sociopolitical history. Therefore, to understand the conditions of knowledge production itself outside of Western traditions that are affirmative of African identity, we must understand that African dance as an epistemology has its place in disrupting long-held epistemic hegemonies and mainstream perspectives. Kumina dance belongs to the African diaspora, to the spirituality of Africa, and to those who choose to hear the drums and remember tradition. The history of Africans, Afro-Caribbean, and Black people’s ways of knowing and knowledge production did not begin with the coming of Western knowledge systems. Historically, the Western world’s definition of knowledge production has given limited credence to African traditions, even though for centuries, Afro-Caribbean people have developed their own sets of experiences and explanations relating to the environments they live in. However, the perspective mentioned above speaks historically to the common refusal to see Black people as the creators of original cultures, producers of knowledge which flowered and survived over the centuries in patterns of their own making. To understand this is to know that theory and the way we live life are not divorced from each other. Our tangible and intangible ways of learning about who we are as African ascendant people are important for self-identity, and they contribute to our informal education and thinking. Finally, the experiences, as revealed

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by Black female oral histories, autobiographies, historical diaries, and photographs, make visible the ways in which regulatory discursive power and privilege are ‘performed’ or exercised in the everyday material world of the socially constructed Black woman.

References Allahar, A. (2005). Identity and erasure: Finding the elusive Caribbean. Revista Europea de Estudios Latino americanos y del Caribe, 79. Awolalu, J. O. (1976). What is African traditional religion. Studies in Comparative Religion, 10(2), 1–10. Brathwaite, K. (2005). Born to slow horses. Wesleyan University Press. Brodber, E. (1989). Myal: A novel. New Beacon Books Ltd. Brown, V. (2008). The reaper’s garden: Death and power in the world of Atlantic slavery. Harvard University Press. Coester, M., & Bender, W. (2015). A reader in African-Jamaican music dance and religion. Ian Randle Publishers. Collins, P. H. (1997). Comment on Hekman’s Truth and method: Feminist standpoint theory revisited”: Where’s the power? Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 22(2), 375–381.

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Collins, P. H. (1998). It’s all in the family: Intersections of gender, race, and nation. Hypatia, 13(3), 62–82. Collins, P. H. (2000). Gender, black feminism, and black political economy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 568(1), 41–53. Collins, P. H. (2002). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203900055 Daniel, Y. (2010). Rhythmic remembrances. In M. Diouf & I. Nwankwo (Eds.), Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic world: Rituals and remembrances (pp.  79–94). University of Michigan Press. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from http://www. jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc5pf5f.7 Davies, C. B. (1994). Black women, writing, and identity: Migrations of the subject. Psychology Press. Davy, B. A. (2018). Kumina in rural southeastern Jamaica: Beyond resistance to antithetical-hegemonic-subsumption. Journal of Pan African Studies, 11(7), 44+. Dei, G. S. (2012). Indigenous anti-colonial knowledge as “heritage knowledge” for promoting black/African education in diasporic contexts. Decolonization: Indigeneity. Education & Society, 1, 102–119. Dillard, C. B. (2006). On spiritual strivings: Transforming an African American woman’s academic life. State University of New York Press. Gilroy, P. (2000). Between camps: Nations, cultures, and the allure of race. The Penguin Press. Hartman, S. (2002). The time of slavery. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(4), 757–777. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-­101-­4-­757 Henry, P. (2016). Epistemic dependence and the transformation of Caribbean philosophy. The CLR James Journal, 22(1/2), 215–240. https://doi. org/10.2307/26752132 Jamaica Information Service. (n.d.). Jamaica’s heritage in dance. Retrieved December 16, 2020, from https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaicas-­heritage-­ dance-­music/jamaicas-­heritage-­dance/ James, J. (2014). Transcending the talented tenth: Black leaders and American intellectuals. Routledge. Kremser, M. (1993). Kélé in St. Lucia. A minority cult emerging from the underground. In T.  Bremer & U.  Fleischmann (Eds.), Alternative cultures in the Caribbean. First international conference of the Society of Caribbean Research, Berlin 1988 (pp. 93–101). Vervuert Verlag. Lewin, O. (2000). “Rock it come over”: The folk music of Jamaica, with special reference to Kumina and the work of Mrs. Imogene “Queenie” Kennedy. University of West Indies Press.

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Mabingo, A. (2015). Decolonizing dance pedagogy: Application of pedagogies of Ugandan traditional dances in formal dance education. Journal of Dance Education, 15(4), 131–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2015. 1023953 McDowell, J. (1995). Knowledge and the internal. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55(4), 877–893. Nettleford, R. (1985). Dance Jamaica: Cultural definition and artistic discovery: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, 1962–1983. GrovePress. Paquet, S. (2002). Caribbean autobiography: Cultural identity and self-­ representation. The University of Wisconsin Press. Sankeralli, B. (2001). Pan-African discourse and the post-creole: The case of Trinidad’s Yoruba’. Unpublished paper, University of the West Indies. Spillers, H. (1987). Mama’s baby, Papa’s maybe: An American grammar book. Diacritics, 17(2), 65–81. Stewart, D. M. (2004). Womanist theology in the Caribbean context: Critiquing culture, rethinking doctrine, and expanding boundaries. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 20(1), 61–82. Stines, L. (2005). Does the Caribbean body Daaance or Daunce? An exploration of modern contemporary dance from a Caribbean perspective. Caribbean Quarterly, 51(3/4), 35–54. Wynter, S. (1970). Jonkonnu in Jamaica. Towards the interpretation of folk dance as a cultural process. Jamaica Journal, 4(2), 34–48.

CHAPTER 15

Land Teachings: Lessons from Keiyo Elders Evelyn Kipkosgei, Isaac Tarus, and Njoki Nathani Wane

African personhood and “being” revolve around earth and all that walks on it, the heavens, the waters, and all that live in it, the natural landscape, the atmosphere, and livestock. The colonizers brought with them a Eurocentric perception that land was a commodity to be purchased and sold. —Kenneth Tafira (2016)

E. Kipkosgei Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] I. Tarus (*) Department of Philosophy, History and Religious Studies, Egerton University, Nakuru, Kenya N. N. Wane Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_15

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Introduction The name Keiyo belongs to a cluster of central Kalenjin communities in Kenya inhabiting parts of the Elgeyo highlands, the eastern Uasin Gishu Plateau, the Elgeyo Escarpment (which is part of the Rift Valley), and the Kerio Valley. For the purposes of this chapter, the name Keiyo rather than Elgeyo is used. The other Kalenjin groups are the Kipsigis, Nandi, Tugen, Marakwet, Terik, Pokot, Okiek, and Sabaots (Shipton, 1988; Distefano, 1985). The Keiyo are divided into 16 patrilineal clans. These are Talai, Terik, Tungo, Toiyoi, Targok, Kimoi, Kong’ato, Kabon, Kobilo, Soti, Saniak, Siokwei, Sokome, Kure, Mokio, and Mokich. Most of these 16 clans acted and settled independently, while others like the Tungo and Kobilo appear to have formed alliances. Keiyo elders concede that they have always been a people on the move. They cannot, however, determine with exact certainty their migration routes. Many of the informants for this chapter believed the various Keiyo clans at some time in their history lived at TulwobKony (Mt. Elgon) (Oral Interview). After staying here for a period, they were forced by population pressure and drought to migrate. The Kobil clan avers their ancestor settled at Kipkono after moving away from TulwobKony. Hunting was their major preoccupation. They were later joined by a Tungo ancestor. Hunting territory was clearly demarcated to avoid conflict whereby a hunted animal became the prey of the occupant of a particular territory. Tradition further states that the two pioneers established the present Kobil and Tungo clans. The former apparently are the most widely spread among the Keiyo clans. Many of these Keiyo clans found sanctuary in the escarpment ledges (ibid.). The emergence and settlement pattern of the Keiyo people has been greatly determined by the environmental and geographical situation. It is evident that geographical features more than anything else contributed to the varying extent of people’s access to livelihoods. Keiyo landscape is divided into three physical regions that run parallel to each other in a north-south direction. These are from west to east—the Highland Plateau, the Elgeyo Escarpment, and the Kerio Valley. The highland plateau rises gradually from an altitude of 2700 m on the Metkei ridges in the south to the north culminating in the Kibargoi ranges that reach heights of about 3000 m at the northern Kaptarakwa boundary. To the east of the plateau,

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the land falls precipitously in a series of steep uplands and flat plateaus that comprise the Elgeyo escarpment. Thereafter, it terminates in the Kerio Valley that averages 1000 m above sea level. The Kerio valley is narrow, averaging 6.4 kilometers in width, and runs some 150 km from north to south (Republic of Kenya, District Atlas Elgeyo Marakwet, 1985). The escarpment has a cool climate and could easily be defended. It therefore acted as a sanctuary to famine refugees, dispossessed people, and victims of colonial administration (Chesang, 1973). It was here that the Keiyo played a game of hide and seek with colonial tax collectors and labor recruiters. In contrast, the traditions of the Keiyo state that they were never forced to live along the escarpment ledges. Our submission is that the Keiyo opted to inhabit the escarpment ledges not because of raids, drought, and famine but because the region suited Keiyo mode of subsistence (Massam, 1927, 1968). Within the escarpment ledges, the Keiyo practiced hunting, gathering, honey collection, herding, cultivation, and symbiotic relationships with their neighbors, the Tugen, Nandi, Maasai, and Marakwet, among others. The Elgeyo escarpment is characterized by rugged hills, deep valleys, rock outcrops, and incised gullies that form seasonal streams that drain into the Kerio River. The Kerio Valley and the escarpment ledge are not easily accessible except through a limited number of passes. Virtually all Keiyo clans own strips of land running from the highlands down to the escarpment into the Kerio valley floor. Such strips were often demarcated by a row of stones or certain types of vegetation. The Kerio River, apart from providing water for animals and for domestic use, has always been an important boundary between the Keiyo and the Tugen. The river was also the venue for social spiritual functions such as cleansing ceremonies and oath taking. It was also here that many Keiyo and the Tugen lost their lives during the hectic days of cattle raiding in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Keiyo exploitation of the three varying ecological zones, considered the difficult ecological and environmental character. Salim Chepkeitany (Oral Interview, 1990) succinctly points out the import of the customary land tenure system by stating that: … for keeping in tune with the universe, there was need to emphasize the importance of harmony and reverence, not only for herself and her family, but also for what surrounds her. I strongly feel that creating reciprocity between land use and conservation of the environment helps to maintain a balance between life-­ sustenance and loss.

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The Kerio Valley floor was basically used for grazing, although cultivation was done along the flood plains of the Kerio River. The yearly floods of the Kerio River were always a welcome relief for they brought fresh fertile soil and moisture for planting and the growth of grass for livestock grazing. Hunting and honey collection were possible in the open woodlands of the Kerio valley. Cultivation was practiced on the upper slopes of the Kerio valley and the foothills of the escarpment. It was here that villages and hamlets were established. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, the escarpment was cooler than the valley floor and free from mosquitoes and tsetse flies. Secondly, the zone was more defensible and therefore secure from attacks. Habitation of the highland plateau began in the early part of the twentieth century, this was the region most affected by colonial rule because of its proximity to the European settlers in the Uasin Gishu Plateau (the take-over of the land by the colonial settlers is not discussed in this chapter, due to space). Land for grazing and cultivation was abundant. This is especially so because the Keiyo cultivated only certain patches leaving the rest for grazing. In addition, their farming implements were crude to allow extensive cultivation. Initially they used to dig sticks until the emergence of ironworkers, Kitong’ik, who supplied the Keiyo with farming tools such as the Mboket (hoe) and Ringet (sickle). This increased their ability to clear land, to cultivate large plots, and with weaponry, they were able to expand their land holdings. The result was that clans acquired land rights running from the highlands down the escarpment into the Kerio valley. Such strips of land were often demarcated by a row of stones or by a certain type of vegetation. As the cultivation of crops gained importance, individual families started cultivating certain areas of communally owned clan land, especially in the highlands, while areas on the valley floor, less suitable for cultivation, were left for communal grazing. This way the traditional form of landownership gradually disappeared starting in the highland plateau, a process that was completed by colonial land policies.

Keiyo Land Tenure, Spiritual Ecology, and Colonization In the Keiyo customs, land is understood as embracing the ecological, cultural, cosmological, social, and spiritual dimensions. The juridical considerations which are ingrained in social systems result in values, norms,

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and observances that protect natural resources, the environment, and wildlife. This is the reason for taboos and strict injunctions that forbid environmental destruction, wanton and indiscriminate cutting down of trees, defiling of sacred sites, pollution of sacred pools where water spirits give life in lieu of water, and transgressions that are said to offend the earth. There is an interface between land, soil, earth, and cosmology. These are inseparable. Of course there is divergence between European jurisprudence and African land laws. The former views land as a private property, a commodity, which underlies the ambition to colonize nature where man rises above it and exploits it to satisfy his greedy impulses. African land laws, and by extension the Keiyo land tenure, debunk the idea of ownership. Instead, the land is a natural endowment that can be neither bought nor sold. African land tenure is not based on ownership but on use and access. Since Africans have common rights to land, communal rights override individual rights, which are subsumed to the overall communal good (Bernstein, 2000). Tenure rights are built through reciprocal obligations and mutuality. Land belongs to the living, the dead, and the unborn, making it inalienable. For Indigenous people, “Nature is the foundation” (Somé, 1999, p. 37) of their life. When people die, they are returned to the earth, the land, hence the sacredness of the land. The dead are highly esteemed because they become ancestors. In African cosmology, communion with the dead facilitates meaningful prayers to God. It is the departed who guide and provide for the living. In African cosmology, there is mutuality between humans and the earth: the earth has the omnipotent power to punish transgressors. However, a particular punishment is not directed toward the offending party, it is collective and universal. The natural world therefore is an “integral part of Indigenous community” (Somé, 1999, p. 38). The African Indigenous people “envision the community as including the geography and the natural world that surrounds and contains the people”, hence the emphasis on spiritual ecology that creates the living, the living dead, and the unseen forces. There is a need to transcend the flawed economic determinist view current in land debates that denies Africans the right to land on the premise that they would not be able to productively use the land. For Africans land is everything. Depriving one of land means robbing them of their personhood, being, and identity—in other words their full humanity (Ogolla, 2016).

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Spiritual ecology is a complex, diverse, and dynamic arena at the interfaces of religions and spiritualities on the one hand and on the other environments, ecologies, and environmentalisms with intellectual, spiritual, and practical components. In the next section, we shall explain this further.

Context of the Study There are other dimensions which are usually neglected when the land question is discussed in the African context. The African view of land extends beyond the merely economic, although productive use of land is fundamental. However, contemporary debates on land redistribution in Africa always privilege the production aspect. This, regrettably, is due to a lack of understanding about what land means to Africans. Of course, the economic is part of the social, the political, the spiritual, the cosmological, and the philosophical (Wilson, 2014). The departure point therefore is an African perspective that enables a broader definition and understanding of land as linked to being and identity. The belief that land stands for the production of agricultural commodities destined for the market is perverted. The primacy of the market and private property, which is the core of capitalist thought and logic, is contrary to the African worldview. Unlike Euro-American considerations, the Africans view life and what it is constituted of as a totality. Land is neither a commodity nor an individual possession. It does not belong to humans but is a gift from God (Barrows & Roth, 1990). The term land tenure is derived from the Latin word tenere which means “to hold”. Tenure defines the social relations between people with respect to the object of tenure, in this case land. Tenure also defines the methods by which individuals or groups acquire, hold, transfer, or transmit property rights in land. Formal rules of tenure therefore define the nature and content of property rights in land or other resources and the conditions under which those rights are to be held and enjoyed (Ogolla & Mugabe, 2017). Concern about land tenure and management of natural resources is not a recent phenomenon in Kenya and indeed in the whole of Africa. Prior to and after independence, radical changes have been deliberately initiated in tenure arrangements. These have mainly been justified based on the expected improvements in productivity, land use planning, and decision making which they would generate. Since land tenure determines access to land, it is a critical variable in the management of natural and

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environmental resources, soil conservation, and water resources as well as wildlife management (Ogolla, 2016). According to Ogolla and Mugabe (2017), land tenure provides the legal and normative framework within which all agricultural as well as other economic activities are conducted. Tenure insecurity whether customary or statutory tenure regimes undermines the effectiveness of these activities. When tenure rights are certain, they provide incentives to use land in a sustainable manner or invest in resource conservation whether for the individual or groups of individuals. Since Kenya has a largely agriculturally based economy, most of its people derive their livelihood from various forms of agriculture. Different communities practice various forms of land use based on their socio-­ economic needs and cultural practices and determined mainly by weather patterns, soil fertility, ecology, and level of social development (Ogolla, 2016).

African Indigenous Theory and Spiritual Ecology Dei (2000) argued that the worth of a social theory should not be measured solely in terms of its philosophical grounding. More significantly, the relevance of a theory should be seen in how it allows us to understand the complexity of human society and to offer a social and political corrective—that is, the power of theories and ideas to bring about change and transformation in social life. In the context of this chapter, a social theory should underpin the understanding of the land tenure system among the Keiyo and juxtapose it against the backdrop of colonialism and the land tenure system. African Indigenous theory of decolonization requires deconstructing the ways in which the human condition is defined and shaped by dominant European-American cultures. In the absence of an understanding of the social reality informed by local experiences and practices, decolonization processes will not succeed. It is the envisioning of knowledge as power and resistance which is essential for decolonizing praxis (Bennett, 2011). Within the colonized peoples’ historiography, for instance, the historic past offers an important body of knowledge that can be a means of staking out an identity which is independent of the identity constructed through Western ideology (Muteshi, 1996). This helps to challenge and resist the continual subordination of other lived experiences and reinforce their status as valid and effectively relevant forms of knowledge. In a

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similar vein, Baro and Batterbury (2005) have observed the problematic use of colonial and postcolonial periods as points of academic reference for Indigenous realities, as if non-Western peoples. Thus, this chapter explores the African Indigenous theoretical framework as well as Spiritual ecology by looking at the power of anti-colonial discursive framework to propel social and political action. Frantz Fanon (1963) long established that decolonization can only be understood as a historical process that ultimately culminates in changing the social order. In this case, the chapter looks at land tenure system before, during, and after colonization and ties. We situate our argument within the African Indigenous knowledge and spiritual ecology as explored by the Keiyo of Kenya. Malidoma Somé notes that “African has much written about, but in areas of … spirituality, where African has quite a profound wisdom to contribute, it has been for the most part written off” (Somé, 1999, p. 12). African spirituality, which is part of African Indigenous ways of knowing, has been dismissed by many as nonexistent or not been part of the Indigenous cosmos of the world. In this chapter we shall indicate that spirituality, and in particular spiritual ecology, is part of the African people’s identity, whether they know it or not. This is why this chapter is part of the decolonizing of the mind, body, and soul. It is worth appreciating that decolonization is an initial violent encounter of two forces “opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies”. Decolonization is a calling into question of the whole colonial situation and its aftermath (Whitehead & Tsikata, 2003). This questioning is important, not as a resting place, but to make the connection between what is and what ought to be with respect to the land tenure system along the Elgeyo escarpment, in Kenya. Put differently, what we emphasize here is the need to combine discussions about what is possible with what exists. What exists matters in the sense of offering a critique of the social order and an awareness of the Keiyo land tenure system.

Approach In this study using a qualitative method of interviewing, the researchers interviewed Keiyo elders whose ages ranged from 50 to 90  years. This group was chosen because of the assumption that they had a rich understanding of the intricate land tenure system along the Keiyo escarpment. For this chapter, the narratives of 10 elders were used. These participants

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had a deep understanding of the ecological situation and their level of cultural knowledge on the environmental degradation of the Keiyo escarpment stood out among all other participants. Six of the participants had formal education, while four had no formal education. Also, the researcher triangulated the methodology by employing content analysis to obtain secondary data. Records on the precolonial and postcolonial land tenure system along the Keiyo escarpment were analyzed and useful information on the Keiyo land tenure system and their spiritual ecology deciphered. Additionally, an exploratory critical literature review was used to drive the overall objective of the study by focusing on relevant literature on African land tenure systems and African cosmology or belief system and thus spiritual ecology on aspects of land tenure.

Land Tenure Systems in Kenya In the Kenya Economic Survey (2002), land broadly falls into two groups: rights that are held through traditional African systems and rights that derive from the English system introduced and maintained through laws enacted by colonial and then the national parliament. The former is loosely known as customary tenure bound through traditional rules (customary law). The latter body of law is referred to as statutory tenure, secured and expressed through national law, in various Acts of parliament, e.g., Government, Registered Land Act (cap 300), Registration of Titles Act (cap 281), and Trust Land Act (cap 288) of the Laws of Kenya. This chapter addresses itself to the customary tenure system among the Keiyo Community in Kenya. Customary land tenure refers to unwritten land ownership practices by certain communities under customary law. Kenya being a diverse country in terms of its ethnic composition has multiple customary tenure systems, which vary mainly due to different agricultural practices, climatic conditions, and cultural practices. Under this tenure system, individuals or groups by virtue of their membership in some social unit of production or political community have guaranteed rights of access to land and other natural resources. Individuals or families thus claim property rights by virtue of their affiliation to the group (Bennett, 2011). Secondly, rights of control rest in the political authority of the unit or community. This control is derived from sovereignty over the area in which the relevant resources are located. Control is for the purpose of guaranteeing access to resources and is redistributive both spatially and

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intergenerationally. Its administrative component entails the power to allocate land and other resources within the group, regulate their use, and defend them against outsiders (Ogolla & Mugabe, 2017). Thirdly, rights analogous to private property accrue to individuals out of their investment of labor in harnessing, utilizing, and maintaining the resource. Thus, the present cultivator of some piece of land has the greatest rights to it. These rights transcend mere usufruct and encompass transmission and in some communities’ transfer (Elias, 2003). Further, resources that do not require extensive investment of labor or which by their nature had to be shared, for example, common pasturage are controlled and managed by the relevant political authority. Every individual member of the political community has guaranteed equal rights of access thereto. The regulatory mechanisms imposed by the political units such as exclusion of outsiders, seasonal variations in land use and social pressure ensured sustainable resource utilization.

The Keiyo Systems of Land Use Keiyo land use and custom was based on five concepts. There were methods of acquiring land, rights over that land, the economic exploitation or use, boundary making and spiritualism, religious spiritualism, and role of thunder. During the precolonial period, no man was landless among the Keiyo, since each man belonged to a certain clan, and it was the responsibility of the clan elders to apportion land to each male member. An informant identified by Chesang (1973) described the process of land ownership among the Keiyo as follows: ... the concept of ownership is based on the belief that a man/woman’s labour power has been involved in the act of claiming a piece of virgin land. It is the notion that someone’s hands have passed over a piece of land (“kakobuneutab chi”) that ownership was recognized.

There was, of course, an order for the acquisition of land. Ownership of land among the Keiyo was determined by customs going back to the initial stages of settlement in the eighteenth century. Land was in the first instance owned by clans. Titular ownership was a creation of colonialism and the twentieth-century expansion into the highland plateau. Clans used to own strips of land, running from the highlands plateau down the escarpment into the Kerio Valley. Such strips were often demarcated by a

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row of stones or a certain type of vegetation. Otherwise, any Keiyo would have free access to the resources of land even of other clans. These included water supplies, pastures, getting building materials, access to salt licks, and the gathering of wild fruits and vegetables (aryek, komolik, tamagensik, ng’osiek). Sons inherited land from their fathers equally. In polygamous households, each wife retained the plots allocated to her. However, since women had no inheritance rights, sons inherited all the plots of their mother. Indeed, this was the case since land ownership centered on the nuclear family, although the clan determined the direction of territorial expansion. Although women had no inheritance rights, they had unquestionable access to agricultural use of the land. Land was valued for the pasture it offered to livestock. Cultivation of crops like millet and sorghum was along the Kerio River and selected regions of Korget and along the escarpment ledges of Tumo. The land factor was one of the most contentious issues in the relationship between the Keiyo and the colonial state. Kiptoo Chirchir (Oral Interview, 1989), an informant for this study, articulates this by stating: …. There is no doubt that the land question was intrinsic for the Keiyo, especially with the loss in 1922 of 328 square miles of prime forest land which was alienated to E.S.M. Grogan Ltd. This was apart from the hundreds of acres of land alienated to other Europeans, and particularly the Afrikaners, on the Uasin Gishu plateau. The Keiyo were forcefully evicted from the 328 square miles of forest, which was alienated to E.S.M. Grogan Ltd. The area of grazing left to them, approximately 72 square miles, was too small and quickly became hopelessly overstocked, making the animals vulnerable.

This loss was deeply resented by the Keiyo as it made them squatters in their land. However, as far as Keiyo-European contact was concerned, the first European settlement on Keiyo land began in 1904. The earliest application by Europeans for land on the Uasin Gishu Plateau was made in 1904 by W.F. Van Breda on behalf of himself and his two brothers. The Keiyo no doubt resented the European penetration into their domain. Their first reaction was very violent and fatal. By 1911 the Van Breda brothers had been forced to abandon their holdings owing to thefts and continual hostility from the Keiyo. The second process of Keiyo land loss also began in 1904 when an agreement was signed between the colonial administration and

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E.M.S. Grogan. The agreement read: “to grant a lease of all that piece or parcel of land near Eldama Ravine comprising 64,000 acres or thereabouts of forest including all rights that were supposedly preserved for the Elgeyo”. In 1932, the Keiyo gave a vigorous demand for their land at the Carter Land Commission that had been established to investigate the problems of land in Kenya. But right up to the attainment of independence, the Keiyo continued the struggle for the land under leaders like William Kiptoo Chirchir (Kipsirimbi). They were greatly influenced by the activities of Somalis who were active stock traders.

Notions of Keiyo Spiritual Ecology and in the Context of Colonial Capitalism African spirituality is rarely talked about, and if it is, it is presented as something evil, something to run away from. Yes, for thousands of years, people of African ancestry have always known the connections between the people, the spirit, and the community. The aspects of the spiritual way of living are an integral part of the community. As Somé has indicated, African people live a holistic life. They know that we are spirits having a human experience and everything we do is connected to both the physical world and the other world of the unseen. When the colonizers came to Africa, they assumed that the empty land was wasted. They did not even care to consult with the elders of the land; they just took the land and started to cultivate it. The cultivator did not know the spiritual ecology of the land. This invasion created imbalance and great disturbance to the ecology. The case study of the Keiyo of Kenya, living on the Great Rift Valley is a great example of the disruption created by the colonial mindset. Keiyo exploitation of its three ecological zones reflects fundamental nuances of the interconnectivity with nature, establishments of symbiotic relationships, and ways of knowing its terrestrial resources. It is argued that the Keiyo have possessed Indigenous wisdom of interactions and adaptations with their environment. They realize that competition with nature is ruinous and that they must contribute a role in the restoration of its human relationships. Colonialism had alienated the Keiyo from the use of their natural resources, viewing them as predators, destroyers, and scavengers. What the colonizers forgot is the fact that “nature is our first home, the foundation of the community, the dwelling place of the spirits who watch over us …” (Somé, 1999, p.  57). It is of necessity then to

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disrupt the colonial narrative of controlled and untouched use of the environment. The colonial state barred the Keiyo from accessing the forest environments. In the 1950s, the Spencer Line was drawn to stop the encroachment of the Keiyo to parts of their ecological systems, especially the Elgeyo escarpment. William Spencer was an agricultural colonial administrator who demarcated the boundary of the escarpment beyond which no human activity was allowed. Unfortunately, this was based on a misplaced understanding of people’s Indigenous knowledge of the environment and of its exploitation. Keiyo Indigenous understanding of land and its use was practical rather than the colonial mindset of untouched environments. Over the ages, there has been a reciprocal relationship between the land and its people. Land tenancy was connected to the spiritual world for their protective power of the spirits. Mwanzi (1977, p. 1) observed that topography may not fully explain why people opt to dominate a certain area, but once they occupy a given space, the landscape does affect people’s way of life. We need to explore the supremacy of shared spaces and disrupt the permanence of the misplaced assumption that the Keiyo are averse to environmental conservation. The relationship is examined in a wider context of the human-­ environment nexus within a spiritual ecology perspective. Topography and its vegetation have contributed to the varying modes of Keiyo spiritual interconnectivity with its natural setting. The hills, ridges, escarpment ledges, the rocks, water, the valleys, and the vegetation have since time immemorial influenced the pattern of Keiyo movements and settlement. Virtually all 17 Keiyo clans owned strips of land running from the highlands down to the escarpment into the Kerio Valley floor that borders the Kerio River. The river, apart from providing water for animals and for domestic use, has always been an important boundary between the Keiyo and the Tugen. This was also the venue for social functions such as cleansing ceremonies, oath taking, and salt licking for livestock. On the other hand, the Elgeyo escarpment has been the setting for spiritual ecological experiences. Available are hidden open spaces, sacred sites and groves, deified fig trees, totemic animals, and sources of watering points. Knowledge of plants, animals, terrain, and weather patterns has a spiritual perspective. The connection to the environment comes from the belief that it is the setting of their spiritual experiences. Take for example the fig tree (simotwet) and the creeper plant (senendet) which are revered in Keiyo communion with nature. They produce spiritual feelings with nature that border on the ontological experience with nature.

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Crops, for example, millet, gourds, pumpkins, castor oil, sorghum, and tobacco, had spiritual mindsets of the sacrosanct. Together with the creeper, senendet (periploca linearifolia) found in most forests and riverine regions of Keiyo land, this formed an important aspect of rites of passage. All this was amplified by Jomo Kenyatta (1938) in his canonical study, Facing Mount Kenya that explains the spirituality of land to the Agikuyu people by demanding from the colonialist the “peaceful tillage of the soil”. Equally important is the spiritual ecology paradigm, as espoused by Rudolf Steiner and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (2002), that interrogates the view of environmentalism and ecology requires spiritual awareness and an attitude of responsibility. Colonialism destroyed Keiyo environmental sustainability and replaced it with a materialistic culture that led to the destruction of the ecosystem. Land was not only a factor of production among the Keiyo but a spiritual determinant of all its spiritual experiences. Closely related to Keiyo spiritual ecology was its conceptualization of the role of women who offered their gifts to the ancestral (spiritual) owners of the land. Women built an arch across a path normally leading to a river or water point. The arch measuring about one and a half meters high was constructed of green twigs and decorated with Sodom apples. The Senendet (euphorbia) twig was also hung from the arch. Millet and milk were poured on the ground. When one went through the arch, it was assumed that he or she had been cleansed of all N’goki (evil). The women would plead to the “mother” of all the ancestral spirits, Kokob-oi, pleading for her intercession on their behalf. Thus, cementing the interconnectivity of reproduction and the perpetuation of the Keiyo community.

Emerging Issues: The “Modernity” Paradox in Land Tenure The cosmology or belief system and hence the spiritual ecology of the ancient people of Africa have a relevance to how many African communities, including the Keiyo, understand and conceptualize ecosystems, environmental change, and conservation today. After independence, it is generally agreed among scholars that there was no attempt to reconcile the customary systems with modern systems of land tenure, and of the recent, more nuanced perception of customary systems, a shift in thinking has taken place. As one of the participants of this study, Toroitich Kandie (Oral Interview, 1989) sums it up:

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…. The modern land policies and laws must build on local concepts and practice, rather than importing one-size-fits-all models. This entails, among other things, legally recognizing local land rights, which are the entitlements through which most people gain access to rural land.

His sentiments are in sync with the latest Policy Research Paper (2016) on land tenure, for instance, the World Bank argued that “in customary systems, legal recognition of existing rights and institutions, subject to minimum conditions, is generally more effective than premature attempts at establishing formalized structures. It is against this backdrop that the Keiyo land ownership and use system, and hence their spiritual ecology can be in tandem with modern thinking on land tenure” (Tanui, 2015). The Keiyo community is experiencing major processes of social and economic transformation. For instance, population pressure is increasing, and competition over land is rising as a result. Along the Keiyo escarpment, urban settlements are growing fast, encroaching on agricultural land and attracting youths from rural areas. In many places, livelihoods are changing, toward greater diversification—with many rural households increasingly relying on a range of off-farm activities in rural areas, as well as on income from urban areas. Local production systems are becoming more integrated into the global economy, with export crops expanding into areas previously used for locally consumed products (Okoua-Bennun & Mwangi, 1996). This is in line with the observation by a study participant Kiprono as indicated by the interview excerpt herein. …. times have changed and the competition for acquisition of land to sustain livelihoods is cut-throat. The land question in Keiyo is of the essence now. The escarpment is feeling the pressure and ecosystems are getting destroyed in the process. We are losing our beautiful flora and fauna as a consequence of the changes in land tenure system among our people.

Over the past decades, the Keiyo escarpment has experienced strong demographic growth. As a result of demographic growth, population density has increased substantially. This demographic has had profound implications for land tenure arrangements. By changing the ratio between labor and land, it can lead to increased competition over more scarce land resources. According to the so-called evolutionary theory of land rights, demographic growth and agricultural intensification increase the value of

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land and lead to a progressive transition from communal tenure toward greater individualization of land rights. This entails the concentration of the bundle of rights in the hands of a single right holder and translates into increasingly monetarized access to land through sales and rental (Chang’ach, 2013). In tandem with this development, Kirono, a study participant aptly articulates that: … our ancestral land is up for auction to the highest bidder. It’s all about who has the financial muscle to have ownership of our ancestral land and we have no control over what the land is to be used for. We are gradually losing control of our land. Our cultural land related artifacts are endangered.

From the responses of the study participants, the researcher concludes that increasing urbanization has important implications for land use and tenure in the Keiyo escarpment. It is the observation of this study that unregulated urban expansion entails the conversion of land from agricultural to residential use. These processes are usually accompanied by the erosion of customary tenure systems and the emergence or consolidation of more individualized forms of tenure (Coldham, 1978a). Urbanization also fosters demand for food products in towns, which in turn boosts processes of agricultural intensification and commercialization in peri-urban areas. Many field studies from peri-urban areas have shown that subsistence food crops, largely cultivated by women, are being replaced by male-dominated food production which is oriented toward marketing produce in neighboring towns. In these areas, customary land tenure is becoming increasingly individualized, informal land markets are growing, land values soaring, and disputes increasing (Mbaya, 2001). These processes of change in land relations in peri-urban areas in the Keiyo escarpment have been accelerated by urban elites (public officials, businessmen, politicians, etc.) seeking to buy land, either for personal use (residential or commercial agriculture) or, often, for speculation purposes. As land values rise, farmers may be forced or tempted to sell their land. Where land is still under customary chiefs, these may be tempted to sell off land for housing and other developments, regardless of the views of those farming this land. This has the net effect of loss of culture among the local population. One of the participants, Kipkosgei, captures this by stating that:

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… the brokers are with us now. They are exploiting our people and tempting us to sell land and holding the land for speculative purposes. Our cultural land tenure system and the value we attach to land is gone. It’s free for all and we are losing our very identity and attachment to our ancestral land.

Evidence from our participants in this study suggests the emergence, to a greater or lesser degree, of monetarized land transfers across the Keiyo escarpment. In the forested regions of the Keiyo escarpment, for instance, the emergence of market transactions is associated with the long history of immigration driven by the local cash crop economy. Here, incomers have gained access to land by acquiring cultivation rights on woodland or cleared land, but also by “buying” this type of land and thus the functioning of the land market. This has led to the commoditization of land among the Keiyo that had eroded the traditional spiritual ecological beliefs among the community members (Tanui, 2015). For instance, it is reported that the oil discovery in Elgeyo/Marakwet County in 2013 split local clans down the middle. The clans are now engaged in disputes over land. Tullow Oil, which has already found commercially viable oil in Turkana County, indicated that Kerio Valley in Elgeyo-Marakwet also has black gold. This announcement gave rise to numerous claims to land in the semi-arid valley, most of which is trust land owned by clans. The lack of titles for the parcels of land compounded the situation that threatened to get out of hand as Tullow confirmed the commercial viability of oil in the area. Each clan was laying claim to a strip of land along the Kerio River on the Keiyo side, where oil is believed to lie. The dispute has led to street protests, with members of the Kongot clan laying exclusive claim to the land that extends from Kerio River down to the Elgeyo escarpment. One of Kongot’s clan elders, 78-year-old Joseph Tunoi, says members of a rival clan invaded it soon after Tullow ventured into the area. It is the assertion of this study that the commercialization of land in the Keiyo escarpment is affecting the land tenure system and hence the belief system of the Keiyo with respect to land (Wanjala, 2000). Changes in  local Keiyo livelihood systems, in cultural patterns, and in local socio-economic relations may also have important implications for customary tenure. These changes may in turn be partly driven by some of the factors examined in the previous sections—such as growing

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urbanization, integration in the world economy, and others. Livelihood diversification illustrates this. It refers to “the continual adaptive process whereby householders add new activities, maintain existing ones and drop others, thereby maintaining diverse and constantly changing livelihood portfolios” (Elias, 2003). Studies show that, in Africa, some 50 percent of rural household incomes are generated from off-farm activities in rural areas and/or from transfers from urban areas or from overseas (including pensions and remittances) (Elias, 2003). A study from Niger and Mali has shown how rural livelihoods have become more diversified since the 1970s, through rural to urban migration and migration to the coastal states of West Africa or even to Europe (Baro & Batterbury, 2005). In the Keiyo escarpment, livelihood diversification entails taking up different agricultural activities. Diversification of livelihoods entails the development of off-farm activities in rural areas and migration to urban areas or abroad. Even in these contexts, however, land access may remain valuable both as a productive asset contributing to a diversified livelihood portfolio and as a safety net in times of crises. At the same time, off-farm livelihood diversification has had repercussions on land tenure systems, particularly in relation to the increased access to monetarized income that it may entail, which has promoted the emergence of land transactions.

Historical Context Tensions are currently high in the lower Cheptebo area of the Kerio Valley in Kenyanty. Three clans are claiming ownership of the land where Tullow Oil is conducting its exploration. According to local media reports, the Kong’oot, Kayoi, and Setek clans are claiming ownership of areas that do not have clear boundaries but may be at the center of potential oil discoveries by Tullow. Without government assistance to clearly define the borders, residents have warned there could be inter-clan fighting. Like in Indigenous communities before the colonial encounter, Keiyo clans have traditionally adopted culturally sensitive methods and techniques which demarcate their ownership of land since ancestral times. Traditional sacred and spiritual sites were preserved for communal rituals to be accessed by everyone regardless of demarcation lines. The lottery-­ like methods were acceptable to all parties and hence border disputes

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hardly arose. The current land ownership disputes witnessed are perpetuated by unfamiliar methods influenced by greed and raw appetite for associated wealth. There is growing interest by nonresident clansmen who see business opportunities to profiteer by selling and leasing land to prospectors. The scouts and speculators possess neither knowledge of nor respect culturally sensitive spaces, thus aggravating tensions. On the other hand, the government is insensitive to the simmering tensions as it prepares to forcefully resettle the affected clans elsewhere. The government’s attitude explains the problematic response by communities that need a system that allows enough dialogue before action is taken. It is unlikely that the affected clans will be willing to relocate before being accorded the dignity of further consultation. In Kenya, local communities have a strong sense of attachment to the land, viewing it as their own and building their identity upon it. Experts have noted that this perception and attachment to a given area leads to continued dissatisfaction among the communities with the government’s processes for allocating land. When communities perceive the government has not done enough to adequately inform and engage the affected residents about the decision-making process, tensions can escalate rapidly. Minerals and energy companies working in the region should remain cognizant of local claims to land and, where possible, engage and inform the affected communities. Land and border disputes have the potential to negatively impact exploration efforts and to result in violent unrest without much warning as pointed out by research analyst Kim Moss in 2014.

Conclusion This study has deconstructed the land tenure system in the Keiyo community in Kenya and the ongoing changes in the institutional arrangements used to transfer land rights—both between groups and between individuals. These changes in the Keiyo escarpment are taking place in a context of increased competition over land, monetarization of the economy, changes in family relations, and decades of government interventions. Customary land tenure arrangements among the Keiyo were based on the belief that land is the essence of their very existence. But the forces of modernity and globalization of the social and economic aspects of

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livelihoods have led to land issues being reinterpreted and renegotiated and have acquired a monetary dimension that they did not have before; and new arrangements (“sales”) are emerging. The arrangements produced by these changes remain deeply embedded in complex social and political relations including the spiritual ecology of the Keiyo. The commercialization of land access and the continuing socio-political dimensions of land relations constitute two seemingly contradictory but parallel and coexisting processes. In the Keiyo escarpment, customary land tenure system is experiencing profound changes because of dramatic structural changes in economies and societies. It is the opinion of this study that these changes are likely to continue over future decades. While some powerful actors like politicians and multinationals like Tullow Company stand to gain from these processes, weaker groups face eviction, displacement, and desecration of their culturally sacred sites. The capitalist prospectors, power brokers, and government muscle are potent tragic disruptions to the Keiyo sustainability and its coexistence with the environment. Sadly, the unfolding scenario portrays the kind of phenomena visited upon Indigenous lands around the world. Communities in Keiyo are left with tensions pitting clans claiming ownership of the land where Tullow Oil is conducting its exploration. There ought to be respectful consultations between all stakeholders and among clans that claim ownership of areas that continue to attract oil-drilling conglomerates for potential oil reserves.

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Appendix

  Kerio River drains into Lake Turkana

 

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References Baro, M., & Batterbury, S. (2005). Land based livelihoods. In B.  Wisner, C. Toulmin, & R. Chitiga (Eds.), Towards a new map of Africa (pp. 53–69). Earthscan. Barrows, R., & Roth, M. (1990). Land tenure and Investment in African Agriculture: Theory and evidence. Journal of Modern African Studies, 28(2), 265–297. Bennett, T. W. (2011). The application of customary law in southern Africa—The conflict of personal laws. Juta &. Bernstein, H. (2000). Social change in the South African countryside? Land and production, poverty and power. Journal of Peasant Studies, 25(4), 1–32. Chang’ach, J.  K. (2013). Influence of Keiyo traditional circumcision on aspirations for higher education among boys in secondary schools, Keiyo South District, Elgeyo-Marakwet, county, Kenya. American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 3, 41–53. Chesang, I. C. (1973). The superstructure of semi-Pastoral Keiyo (Kalenjin). BA Dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam. Coldham, S. (1978a). Land control in Kenya. Journal of African Law, 22(1), 63–77. Coldham, S. (1978b). The effect of registration of title upon customary land rights in Kenya. Journal of African Law, 22(2), 91–111. Dei, G. (2000). Rethinking the role of indigenous knowledges in the academy. International Journal of Inclusive Education., 4(2), 111–132. https://doi. org/10.1080/136031100284849 Distefano, J. A. (1985). The pre-colonial history of the Kalenjim: A methodological comparison of linguistic and oral traditional evidence. PhD Dissertation, University of California. Elias, M. (2003). Emotionally intelligent parenting: How to raise a self-disciplined, responsible, socially skilled child. Random House/Three Rivers Press. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Grove Press (p. 62). Kenneth, T. (2018). Xenophobia in South Africa: A history (African histories and Modernities). Palgrave Macmillan. Kenya Economic Survey. (2002). Nairobi: Central bureau of statistics. Massam, J. A. (1927). The Cliff Dwellers of Kenya: An Account of a People Driven by Raids, Famine and Drought to Take Refuge on the Inaccessible Ledges of Precipitous Mountains, with a Description of Their Ways of Living, Social System, Manners and Customs, Religion, Magic & Superstitions. Seeley, Service & Company Limited. Massam, T. (1968). The quark hunters’ progress (No. CERN-68-24). Cern. Mbaya, S. (2001). The impact of land relations on the role of communities in forest future; land peoples and forests at the beginning of the 21st century. IUCN.

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Muteshi, J. (1996). A refusal to argue with inconvenient evidence: Women, proprietorship and Kenyan law. Dialectical Anthropology, 23(1), 55–81. Mwanzi, H. A. (1977). A History of the Kipsigis. Ogolla, E. (2016). The nature of African customary law. Manchester University Press. Ogolla, E., & Mugabe. (2017). Land tenure systems; in land we trust. Initiative Publishers. Okoua-Bennun with Mwangi A. M. (1996). Land tenure and Forest resources: In land we trust. Initiative Publishers. ya. Policy Research Paper. (2016). Gender-differentiated impacts of tenure insecurity on agricultural performance in Malawi’s customary tenure systems (English). World Bank Group. Shipton, P. (1988). The Kenyan land tenure reform: Misunderstandings in the public creation of private property. In R. E. Downs & S. P. Reyna (Eds.), Land and society in contemporary Africa (pp.  91–135). University Press of New England. Somé, M. (1999). The healing wisdom of Africa: Finding life purpose through nature, ritual, and community. Penguin Putnam. Steiner, R. (2002). According to Matthew: The Gospel of Christ’s Humanity. SteinerBooks. Tafira, H. K. (2016). Black nationalist thought in South Africa: The persistence of an idea of liberation. Springer. Tanui, P. J. (2015). A gender analysis of the influence of colonial policies on access to land and agricultural technology among the Nandi in Kenya, 1895–1954. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 5(9), 217–229. Wanjala, S. (2000). Essays on land law: The reform debate in Kenya. Faculty of Law, University of Nairobi. Whitehead, A., & Tsikata, D. (2003). Policy discourses on Women’s land rights in sub-Saharan Africa: The implications of the return to the customary. Journal of Agrarian Change, 3(1), 67–112. Wilson, A. (2014). Land tenure and economic development—A study of the economic consequences of land registration in Kenya’s smallholder areas. Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 6(3), 124–151.

CHAPTER 16

Beyond Territory: Engendering Indigenous Philosophies of Land as Counter-hegemonic Resistance to Contemporary Framings of Land in Kenya Wambui Karanja

Introduction Ensuing colonization involved the dispossession of Indigenous African people of their lands through various legal and land administration maneuvers (Okoth-Ogendo, 1991) and various forms of extreme violence exerted against any form of resistance to the colonial land grab (Elkins, 2005; Kanogo, 1987). Indigenous Africans not only suffered land loss, dispossession, and displacement from their lands, but the colonial project also aimed at erasing Indigenous African traditions, customs, and identities (Wa Thiong’o, 1986). Through colonial land loss and dispossession, people did not only lose their lands but also became alienated and disengaged from the land.

W. Karanja (*) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_16

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Indigenous land tenure systems had social institutions that ensured land holding and use and access to all members of the community. These institutions were disrupted by colonial tenure systems but have always endured (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002). The aim of this chapter is to interrogate how colonial land holding and management regimes altered Indigenous conceptions of land and relationships with the land and to explore pathways for reclaiming our embodied relationships with the land. The chapter examines what land meant before colonization, how these relationships were disrupted by colonialism, and what opportunities exist for resurging those relationships. It proposes the need for asking pertinent questions such as what does land mean today? What are the implications of how we relate to land? And how can we reconnect with our Indigenous relationships with the land?

The Question of Indigeneity: Who Is Indigenous to Africa? Theorization of Indigenous land relationships or what is commonly referred to as pre-colonial or customary land conceptions and relationships in Africa requires that we explore the question of Indigeneity in Africa. Who is Indigenous to Africa, and what attributes give a person an African Indigenous Identity? Wrestling with this question is critical for various reasons. Looking at contemporary discourse on Indigeneity in Africa, there has been a tendency to frame the definition of Indigeneity within the Western international human rights framework. Although there does not exist a single agreed upon definition of Indigeneity under international law and the definition of the term ‘Indigenous’ ‘has remained contested’ (Weaver, 2000), the international community has proffered a working definition that identifies Indigenous people as ‘peoples, communities, and nations who exhibit several characteristics including self definition as Indigenous, non-dominance, historical continuity with pre-colonial societies, ancestral territories, and ethnic identity’ (Martinez-Cobo, 1986) and also including the sovereign right to self definition as well as recognition by the group or a member of the group (Daes, 1996; Guenther et al., 2006). These identifying features have been summarized including historical occupation of land, history of being conquered, dispossession and dislocation from their land by settlers, distinctiveness from others, descendance from non-Europeans, etc. (UN, 2004).

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Western definitions have been critiqued for failing to acknowledge the definitional power of the West, for ascribing homogeneity among all Indigenous communities (Alfred, 1999; Agrawal, 1995), and for interfering with Indigenous group identities which vary over time and place, being post-modernist and imperialistic and as serving to partition Indigenous bodies and communities by imposing political/legal fictions to cultural peoples (Anderson, 2001). Western definitions tend to see Indigenous people as minorities in their own communities and as having been conquered by the West. Others have critiqued these international definitions as potentially leaving out Indigenous people in Africa, Asia, and other places that are oppressed by equally ‘original’ inhabitants of neighboring lands that have now become the dominant groups of their society (Weissner, 1999). However, it is argued that not all Indigenous peoples were non-­ dominant or were conquered (Alfred, 1999). These contestations including Indigenous people’s sovereign right to self-define have offered justification for Indigenous people to offer a self-definition as ‘peoples who have long understood their existence as peoples or nations, as expressed in their own languages in the axis of land, culture, and community’, with Indigeneity consequently defined as the state of being Indigenous, as thinking, speaking, and acting with the conscious intent of regenerating one’s own Indigeneity (Alfred & Corntassel, 2005). The rejection of definitions offered by international bodies such as the UN has been theorized as a form of resistance to the definitional power and authority of the West. Despite these contestations, the United Nations’ definition of who is Indigenous is significant for three reasons: first, the UN and its affiliated organizations are considered the discursive benchmark and quintessential authoritative voice of the international world community, with definitional authority in delineating and setting international standards for ordering international global relationships with their legal frameworks tending to be seen as the world’s universal law (Hoffman, 1956). Second, despite the right to self-definition for Indigenous peoples, definitions by Western researchers seem to borrow heavily from the UN definition with literature suggesting that despite contestations, the UN definition has continued to gain a measure of acceptance by some Indigenous scholars and peoples. In Africa, the definition of who is Indigenous has remained a contentious issue (Zeleza, 2006; Nyamnjoh, 2007; Wane, 2019). It is attributed to Africans holding unique African languages, knowledge systems, beliefs,

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and invaluable knowledge of the natural environment qualify to self-define as Indigenous (Shizha, 2012). African Indigeneity is claimed by all previously colonized societies or tribes that have ancestral roots in continental Africa as well as those who were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean as slaves, provided they wish to be recognized as such (Shizha, 2013). African Indigeneity is also linked with identity, peoples’ view of their world, relationality, and interconnectedness of the African worldview (Mbiti, 1990). Also, asserting own Indigeneity has been theorized as a tool for Indigenous resistance and for reclaiming Indigenous identity and agency (Emeagwali & Dei, 2014). It is linked with knowledge production and the process of ‘coming to know, with Land being an important source of teaching’ (Dei, 2014). The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ and Rights (ACHPR) has maintained that in Africa, the term Indigenous populations does not mean ‘first inhabitants’ in reference to aboriginality as opposed to non-­ African communities or those having come from elsewhere and therefore any African can legitimately consider him/herself as indigene to the Continent (AU, 2007). This definition has been tested by UN definitions that have attributed Indigeneity to some disadvantaged groups in their respective countries. While acknowledging the human rights violations of marginalized communities in Africa, in the context of this chapter, Indigeneity is attributed to everyone with ancestral roots to Africa who wishes to self-identify as such. Colonialism and land rights are theorized in the context of the AU’s assertion that Africans are Indigenous to Africa.

Locating Myself I locate myself as an African Canadian of Kenyan descent and as a product of the colonial Western education system both in Kenya, where I received my elementary and undergraduate education, and in Canada, the site of my postgraduate studies and current residency. My interest in land came early because of growing up in a small-scale farming family in rural Kenya and being keenly aware of the importance of land for our subsistence and as a source of the cash crop economy that helped pay school fees for myself and my siblings. In my innocence growing up, I thought everyone had land like we had and that landless people were only found in the city. I later came to learn that there were rural landless people, although, at that time, I did not have the knowledge to understand why until later when I

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was able to associate rural landlessness with the large multinational farming corporations in those areas where landlessness was prevalent. I was fortunate to have parents who had participated in the struggle for land during the Mau war of independence and came to learn from the kitchen fire stories my mother would share with us how the war was tied not only to self-government but also to the reclamation of land from the colonialists. I have fond memories of living on the land, and through my scholarship, I have come to learn and appreciate that land is much more than its physical space. Colonialism dispossessed and disinherited Kenyans of their lands and relationships to the land were adversely affected to the extent that land has almost lost its true meaning. In this chapter, I interrogate how we can reclaim how we understand land and our relationship with it the way our ancestors did. It is a call to look at land differently, to rethink what land means to us and why it matters. My own lived experience speaks to the criticality of land for sustenance, survival, and identity. Land matters a great deal. I hope by reading this chapter, people will understand why and be compelled to think about land as it has always been, before its encounter with colonial disruptions.

The Nexus of Land and Indigeneity In Indigenous philosophical, conceptualizations of land differ from how it is understood in the West. Unlike in Western thought, among many Indigenous communities, land includes not only its physical attributes but is connected to selfhood, identity, the psyche, and memory of the people, extending to the universe to include the sky, seas, water, rivers, plants, and all living and non-living things. It is tied up with creation and considered and embodiment of the creator and as a place of knowing and experiencing everyday living (Dei, 2008). There exists an intricate interplay of land and Indigeneity where the term ‘Indigenous’ is seen as being about relationship to land and place, being with and on the land, and claiming territorial space and sense of belonging to the land (Dei, 2015 (a)). Land is also conceptualized as ‘Mother’ in that it provides sustenance, shelter, knowledge, and medicine (Kenyatta, 1938). The relationship between Indigenous people and the land is reciprocal and Indigenous people see themselves as keepers of the land just as they look to the land for sustenance, guidance, and healing (Simpson, 2004). Land, culture, and spirit are interconnected. These interconnections are central to ways of knowing and acting with the connection to the land

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being maintained and sustained through memory and articulated in stories and as a life force and for many Indigenous communities, that there is no life without the land (Mabo Case, 1992). Indigenous people’s visions of origin are theorized through land/earth as a living thing (Colomeda & Lorelei, 1999). Many Indigenous people see themselves as inseparable from the land, having and living in a harmonious reciprocal relationship with it and the natural environment. In a relationship that is spiritual, physical, social, and cultural, with the land as a provider of sustenance, guidance, and healing. In return, Indigenous peoples see themselves in a reciprocal relationship with the land, not as mere users of the land but as its keeper, with responsibility for protecting it (Robbins, 2011; Gocke, 2013). This relationship is spiritual, relational, and reciprocal, and starting from time immemorial, it is grounded in the values of respect, spirituality, physical dependency, and interdependency. It is a relationship not of ownership but of stewardship to protect the land, the sea, and all the creatures that inhabit the land and as a life force and source of Indigenous knowledges, medicine, and heritage (Alfred & Corntassel, 2005). Without land, there is no life. Land provides the link to and communion with ancestors in a relationship that binds the dead, the living, and children. Losing land is seen as being analogous to losing life and the Spirits (Pearson et  al., 2014). For example, the Aboriginal people of Australia view their relationship with their land as an intricate, deep, and interrelated symbiotic relationship that informs every aspect of their existence. It is a relationship they articulate, of being in and of the land (Howes, 1996).

African Indigenous Land Tenure Inquiry of Indigenous African land tenure systems requires critical interrogation of the application, use, and meaning of English language terms to describe pre-colonial African land holding and land use practices. Words such as ownership, communalism, sale, tenure, freehold, and commons that are found in Western jurisprudence are embedded with colonial definitional power and may have no parallel meanings when applied to Indigenous tenure systems and should be used with caution (Haugerud, 1989; Karanja, 1991). For example, Walker (2004, p. 5) notes that the terms ‘communal’ and ‘customary’ are distinct and not coterminous, although they have been used interchangeably since communal tenure systems may not be based on customary law or dependent on traditional institutions for their administration. It is therefore critical that application

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of these terminologies is troubled due to their colonial origins and their use as tools meant to ascribe foreign meanings to Indigenous land holding systems to make them intelligible for the colonial enterprise. The term customary tenure, often conflated with Indigenous tenure, has been described as an omnibus term that means collectively owned land usually under the authority of traditional leadership that included traditional chiefs, large families, or clans (Chimhowu, 2019). African Indigenous land tenure has been described as a Commons (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002) due to its common ownership and the management of land by all members of an ethnic group (Ensinger, 1997). While stewardship of the land was vested in a tribe, chieftaincy, or clan, the land was held communally and every member of the tribe or community was ensured rights of control, access, and use of the land with social limitations and control over land use (Downs & Reyna, 1988). Individual ownership and outright sale of land did not exist (Chimhowu, 2019; Karanja, 1991), a fact buttressed by several attributes such as the belief that land belonged to the dead, to the living, and to posterity and could therefore not be owned as it was bestowed on the living by the ancestors to hold in trust for posterity through a family, lineage, or clan. However, rights of use were transferable to other family members (Amanor, 2010). This fundamental feature of communal ownership, inalienability, and guaranteed user rights were to be found in most pre-­ colonial African land tenure systems across comparable agro-climatic zones on the continent (Migot-Adhola & Bruce, 1994). Indigenous tenure systems uphold the principles of obligation and responsibility (Njiro, 1999). All members of the community had rights of access to land, derived from rights of first clearance, membership to the group, political allegiance, marriage, migration, friendship, inheritance, etc., which were always limited by obligations to the family, clan, and the community. Often members of the community could exercise concurrent rights and claims in the same piece of land (Onalo, 1986; Mwangi, 2016). Among the Gikuyu of Kenya, for example, the community is said to have settled in their current ancestral lands during the Bantu migrations of 1200–1600 AD (Muriuki, 1974; Leakey, 1977b; Kenyatta, 1938), although others have maintained that the period of migration was between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries (Droz, 2017). What later became Gikuyu Land was initially inhabited by the original inhabitants, the Gumba/Athi/Digiri/Dorobo/Okiek hunter-gatherer tribes before the arrival of the Gikuyu (Hobley, 1922; Dundas, 1955). It is from these

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communities that the Gikuyu acquired their lands through intermarriage and/or assimilation of these tribes into the Gikuyu tribe (Kenyatta, 1938; Leakey, 1977a) or through first clearance of virgin forest (kuuna kı ̃rı ̃ti) or through asserting initial hunting rights (mı ̃gũda ya mı ̃tego). Others have argued that the Gikuyu acquired the lands through purchase (Barlow, 1932). It has been noted that the Gikuyu acquired their lands through a process that consisted of oaths, alliances, and partnerships and sometimes by payment but never by force or chicanery (Muriuki, 1974). Under the Gikuyu system of land tenure, the basic land-owning unit was the Mbari, which comprised several families (Nyumba) tracing their origin to one ancestor and was administered by the titular head of the Mbari (Muramati) on behalf of members of the Mbari. The family is made up of a man, his wife or wives, and their children (Muriuki, 1974). Mbari consisted of a group of families tracing their origin through a single male ancestor who was the founder of the Mbari. Independent family units (Nyumba) had their individual land holdings within the Mbari land to which they had perpetual rights of ownership to the exclusion of other members of the Mbari except for communal grazing lands and salt licks (Kenyatta, 1938; Leakey, 1977a; Muriuki, 1974; Borona, 2019; Karanja, 1991). Administration of Mbari land was entrusted to the nominal or titular head of the Mbari (Muramati) as guardian or custodian of the land. The Mbari ownership of land was anchored by strong religious beliefs including ancestral worship which led to deep attachments to ancestral Mbari land and safeguarded it against internal exploitation or external influence (Kenyatta, 1938; Leakey, 1977a, Muriuki, 1974). Inheritance of Mbari land was through the male line and on the death of the titular head, ownership/guardianship of the land passed to the next in line male head. Of note is that under Gikuyu Indigenous land tenure, there was no right to inheritance through the female line and girls could continue to cultivate portions of their mother’s land after marriage but only at the pleasure of their fathers or brothers (Muriuki, 1974; Karanja, 1991). A person could only claim rights to the land of the Mbari of which he was a member, but customary practices of land occupancy and use were inclusive rather than exclusive and ensured that everyone had access to land. A person who did not belong to the Mbari could acquire cultivation rights based on friendship as a rent-free tenant-at-will (muhoi) or as an immigrant (muthami) in a system of land use that assured that their tenancy was safe for as long as they operated within the limits of the law of the land (Kenyatta, 1938; Leakey, 1977a).

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The founding of new Mbari was based on young men moving out of the Mbari land to find their own Mbari due to land shortage. Several Mbari units with a single ancestor united to become a clan (Muhiriga). Gikuyu clans formed the basis of the Gikuyu tribe and were united by an age-grouping unit (riika) that was responsible for the security and welfare of the entire Gikuyu tribe in defense of territory (Leakey, 1977a; Kenyatta, 1938). In Indigenous Gikuyu land tenure, there were no outright sales of land in perpetuity and the ‘sale’ of land was redeemable with the only right conveyed in these transactions being temporary and provisional right to reside, to cultivate, and to keep stock on a given area or areas and the right of redemption could always be exercised (Barlow, 1932, pp.  155–166). Mackenzie maintains that in the case of Murang’a, for example, all land claims were negotiated within the context of the Mbari authority, and no outright sales of land existed except in the Kiambu area to the south (Mackenzie, 1990, p. 17). Kenyatta (1938) has maintained that Gikuyu land tenure was not communal; that, while the whole community collectively defended their territory, every inch of land had its owner; and that the only areas that were communally owned were salt licks (for animals), rights of way, and areas for the collection of firewood (pp. 27, 32). He has argued that the original owner of the land had full rights to sell it or give it to anyone he liked without consulting anyone, except the elders who acted as the ceremonial witnesses in all land transactions (p.  31). This assertion is challenged by his own claim that: Man is the owner of his land … but in so far as there are other people of his own flesh and blood who depend on the land for their daily bread, he is not the owner. but the partner, or utmost, the trustee for the others. Since the land is held in trust for the unborn as well as for the living and since it represents in partnership the common life of generations, he will not lightly take it upon himself to dispose of it. (Kenyatta, 1938: 27)

Also, Leakey has also argued that the concept of tribal tenure did not exist among the Gikuyu except in the way the Gikuyu regarded land owned by a Gikuyu as Gikuyu land (Leakey, 1935, p. 679). These points of contestation have not been reconciled. For example, Kenyatta has not reconciled his claim of land alienability in Kiambu with his assertion that land was a gift from God that could not be owned. However, the historical context of the time could explain this departure. For Barlow (1932) and Leakey (1977a), these kinds of assertions were not far removed from the

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colonial intentions of the time, considering the suitability of Kiambu land for large-­scale colonial land alienation. Also, they could not elaborate on who could exercise this right of alienation in Kiambu, considering that the rights of ownership of Indigenous Gikuyu had been statutorily and legally extinguished before 1932 (Okoth-Ogendo, 1991). Other issues such as the belief of land as a gift from God (Ngai) and the historical fact that the land was in occupation by other communities before the arrival of the Gikuyu to the area have not been reconciled (Karangi, 2005). Other features of Gikuyu Indigenous land tenure included (1) the concept of land as being held in a trusteeship relationship, a point that Leakey argues, made it difficult for the Gikuyu to accept the Crown as the ultimate owner of the land, believing that they had lent the land to the British Crown (Leakey, 1977a). (2) The redeemability of land transfers was always with the understanding that the land was redeemable when the debt was settled. (3) The spirit of mutual accommodation and reconciliation in settling land disputes (Leakey, 1977a). (4) The existence of concurrent rights to the same parcel of land where different people could exercise certain rights to the same parcel of land concurrently as a person, other than the landowner. For example, one person could exercise rights to trees and beehives on a piece of land that belonged to another landowner (Onalo, 1986). While these characteristics are not exhaustive, they provide an analysis of Gikuyu Indigenous land tenure and the commonalities it shares with the wider African Indigenous land tenure system.

Indigenous Conceptions of Land Among the Gikuyu People of Kenya Indigenous Africans’ conceptions of land are multifaceted and differ due to local specificities. However, they share commonalities informed by the African worldview (Migot-Adhola & Bruce, 1994). These conceptions are anchored in African philosophies that started from the beginning of time and constituted embodied thoughts that connect individuals and ancestors such as creation stories that enable each community to make sense of their existence in the universe (Asante, 2000) as well as other lifelong intergenerational teachings which enable the African to journey through life (Ilmi, 2019). In Indigenous African philosophical thought, there exists a deep connection between land, the people, and the environment (Wane, 2014). Land is seen as an embodiment of the Creator, and therefore

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connected to the spirit, psyche, and memory, and includes the living and the dead, extending to the universe to include the sky, seas, water, rivers, and plants, and as a place of knowing, relates to identity and selfhood (Dei, 2008). These shared norms include theorizations of the concept of land as a commons and as a cultural heritage of Indigenous African people and not as a commodity as in Western thought (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002; Karanja, 1991). As a cultural heritage, land is sacred and is held in trust by the living. It belongs both to the living and to the dead and is passed down from ancestors (Kenyatta, 1938; Karangi, 2005). It is the source and basis of life and existence for the family, community, or tribe (Ndulo, 2011). Land embodies life and right to life, as the incarnation of culture and source of Indigenous African languages (Barume, 2010). The concept of land, an embodiment of the creator is a common theme among many African Indigenous peoples. In Ghana traditional philosophy, Asante (1965) has argued that land is conceived as sacred, with many Indigenous communities seeing land as owned by the Earth Spirit, the giver of life, while the Ashanti, for example, see land as belonging to the ancestors. Land is manifested as a supernatural female force, the inexhaustible source, and the provider of sustenance and as a sanctuary of departed souls and ancestors connected to the living and to posterity through the ‘Stool’. Citing Ollennu (1962, p.  4), Asante underscores this ancestral link to land by referencing Chief Nana Ofori Atta’s historic claim that land belongs to a vast family of whom many are dead, a few are living, and countless hosts are still unborn. Reverence to ancestral spirits is tied to the preservation of land that the living share with the dead and is held as a heritage and as an ancestral Trust for their own benefit and for the unborn. (Asante, 1965). In Facing Mount Kenya, Kenyatta (1938) shares the same vision of land as Chief Nana Ofori and uses the imagery of land as ‘Mother’ and the life-giving force of the womb to underscore the concept of land as life and as a gift from God that is inherited from the ancestors and held by the present generation in trust for the unborn. This overview situates land as critical to Indigenous African survival and sustenance, as an intergenerational and enduring gift that is held in a trusteeship relationship linking the past, the present, and the future and whose ownership is reposed in God as Creator. These few examples underscore the deep relationship Indigenous Africans have with the land and inform Indigenous conceptions of land for many African peoples.

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While many similarities in pre-colonial conceptions of land exist among the many cultural communities in Kenya, there exist specificities that are peculiar to each tribe’s pre-colonial conceptions of their land, informed by each tribe’s ontological and cosmological belief systems and worldview. For Indigenous Gikuyu people, land is perceived as a gift from God (Ngai) to the Gikuyu people through their ancestors, Gikuyu and Mumbi, and through this ontological link with God and the ancestors, the land is imbued with spiritual and emotional value as the most sacred thing above everything that dwells in and on it. Land is life-giving in that it provides all the material needs of life and is the medium through which the Gikuyu achieve their spiritual and mental contentment. It is the most significant factor in the social, political, religious, and economic life of the Gikuyu and is linked with Gikuyu Indigenous identity formation. Land is imbued with spiritual significance as the medium through which the Gikuyu people maintain their connection with and commune with their ancestors. It is a sacred ancestral link that is sustained through contact with the soil where the ancestors are buried, and it is through contact with the soil that generations of Gikuyu are united in their participation in the land as source of sustenance and as the medium of and link to their spirituality, culture, and knowledge that has been passed down for generations, giving the Gikuyu their identity and tribal unity (Kenyatta, 1938). For the Gikuyu people, land can mean the country, an area of land, a plot, or cultivation ground and is a creation of God (Ngai) who is the owner of the earth and of Gikuyu land. The powerful imagery of land as Mother signifies the ontological link of the Gikuyu to their land in an imagery that is analogous to the creative power of the womb to give and nurture life. There exists a deep spiritual and cosmological link between the Gikuyu and the land with land seen as the medium through which communion with God and the ancestors is maintained. Karangi underscores the deep ontological spiritual and sacred significance of the Mugumo (baobab) tree in the Gikuyu belief system to draw an intricate link between land, nature, cosmology, and spirituality as inexorably linked to and constitutive of the ontological identity of the Gikuyu tribe and its knowledge production. For the Gikuyu, the Mugumo (baobab) tree not only is a source of sustenance but also informs every aspect of Indigenous Gikuyu epistemological, ontological, axiological, and cosmological beliefs. It is the site of all sacred Gikuyu ceremonies including ceremonies for communing with the Gikuyu God (Ngai), circumcision, prayers for rain, ceremonies of power

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handover from one ruling generation to the next generation, community reconciliation, belonging, transformation, health and fertility, and tribal safety and protection ceremonies that were all held under the Mugumo tree to symbolize not only life and power of the tribe but also the presence of God, ‘Ngai’. Land not only is the podium of ritual and sacrifice to God and to the ancestors but is also the ancestral home of the Gikuyu people. It is the abode of God, and as a site for divine manifestation, it nurtures the sacred Mugumo tree and other groves used for rituals and ceremonies (Karangi, 2005). The interconnectedness of land with Indigenous Gikuyu ontology, identity, and culture such as rites of passage into adulthood and worldview is underscored in the literature (Kilson, 1955; Leakey, 1977a; Lonsdale, 1992; Wa-Githumo, 1981) where land is perceived as the axis through which the Gikuyu family was built, as the medium of their spiritual connection to their ancestors and their God and with neighboring groups, and as the bedrock of Gikuyu identity and site of struggle against colonial domination and resistance (Wa-Githumo, 1981, p. 34). Berman proceeds to maintain that the Gikuyu land was also conceptualized as time, connecting the dead, the living, and the unborn (Berman, 1990, p. 313). It is the source of Gikuyu culture and identity (Lonsdale, 1992). Land has been linked to Gikuyu rites of passage. For example, it is argued that a man without land remained a boy irrespective of his age while a Gikuyu girl became a woman through cultivation of crops and providing for her family and remained a girl if she could not accomplish these two things (Elkins, 2005). Land, Epistemology, and Knowledge Production Land conceptualized in Indigenous philosophies is the source of Indigenous knowledge. Although not much scholarship exists on the relationship between land and Indigenous knowledge production (Anderson, 2010; Coulthard, 2007), the link has been asserted by Indigenous communities (Fals-Borda, 1980; Simpson, 2000; Dei, 2000, 2015; Njoki, 2000; Wane & Chandler, 2002) and the international community. The UN, for example, acknowledged the interrelatedness of land/territory and Indigenous knowledge by maintaining that Indigenous knowledge comprises all knowledge pertaining to a particular people and its territory, the nature or use of which has been transmitted from generation to generation. This relationship is further buttressed by those who have

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contended that Indigenous knowledges is knowledge that has developed based on long-term occupancy or unbroken residence of a place or land and rooted in Indigenous peoples’ cosmological beliefs of their connectedness with and the sacredness of the Land (Fals-Borda, 1980; Simpson, 2000). Indigenous knowledge has been described as the common-sense ideas and cultural knowledges of local peoples concerning the everyday realities of living (Wane, 2002). It is about the epistemic saliency of their cultural traditions, values, belief systems, and worldviews. This knowledge refers to traditional norms and social values as well as to mental constructs that guide, organize, and regulate how a people make sense of their world. As subjective holistic dynamic knowledge, it changes with time and place and is historically rooted in Indigenous peoples’ cultural experiences, residing in undocumented observations in tangible and intangible anti-hegemonic forms (Dei et  al., 2000; Castellano, 2000). African Indigenous knowledges are cultural traditions, values, belief systems, and worldviews of the local people and come from people’s direct experience of nature and its relationship to the social world. As holistic knowledge, it encompasses the mental, intellectual, spiritual, and physical development of the individual at the interface of the self, society with the earth. It is the source of Indigenous cultural knowledge and is understood in the contexts of local proverbs, parables, fables, myths, mythologies, and folklores which encompass words of wisdom, instruction, and knowledge about society (Dei G. J., 2008). Transmitted from generation to generation by community elders, Indigenous knowledges refer to worldviews that are products of a profoundly direct experience of nature and its relationship with the social world. These relationships are encoded in the structure of Indigenous languages and political and spiritual systems and are lived in the hearts and minds of Indigenous peoples (Henderson, 2000). As empirical knowledge, Indigenous knowledge has been described as ‘folk knowledge’, ‘local knowledge or wisdom’, ‘non-formal knowledge’, ‘culture’, indigenous technical knowledge’, ‘traditional ecological knowledge’, and ‘traditional knowledge’ (Dunn, 2016). Indigenous knowledge is a product of the interpretations, meanings, and representations that Indigenous people draw from their natural environment and their interaction with it which, through practice over generations, become cultural complexes that encompass language, naming and classification systems, resource use practices, ritual, spirituality, and worldview (Fenstad, 2002). The primacy of

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land in Indigenous knowledge production is underscored to maintain that if knowledge is a product of how people make sense of their environment, it is plausible to claim the primacy of Indigenous peoples’ situatedness in and on the land as germane to their sense making and, therefore, to their knowledge production (Karanja, 2018, 2019). Indigenous knowledge has been framed as the complex set of activities, values, beliefs, and practices that has evolved cumulatively over time and is active among communities and groups that are its practitioners (Owuor, 2008). Pedagogical Implications of Land for Indigenous People In Indigenous epistemology, the self, land, and the natural world are interconnected and inseparable from each other (Craft, 2013) in an epistemological link that sees land as the source of Indigenous knowledge, understanding, and knowledge production (Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, 2014, Howes, 1996). Land is considered a source of the community’s strength and vital for the survival of the community’s knowledges, languages, cultures, and education in a relationship that is regenerative of Indigenous cultural, spiritual, and political practices and ways of being (Alfred, 2009). Pedagogy of land includes not just the materiality of land but also its spiritual, emotional, and intellectual aspects (Cajete, 2008, 1994) and prioritizing Indigenous theorizing, Indigenous land rights, and Indigenous sovereignty (Tuck et  al., 2014). It is a relationship that is familial, intimate, intergenerational, and instructive (Meyer, 2008) with land being seen as the source and first teacher of truths that have been proven over time (Styres et al., 2013). It is instructive that Indigeneity, land, and knowledge production inform an Indigenous identity that is about the process of ‘coming to know’, with the land being an important source of teaching (Dei, 2014). Simpson (2014) underscores the pedagogic implications of land to maintain that education is neither Indigenous nor education if it does not arise from deeply rooted land relationships (Simpson, 2014) with land being the source of Indigenous knowledge as both teacher and pedagogy. For indigenous people, elders are custodians of Indigenous knowledges and land-based pedagogies (Alfred, 2009). Kenyatta (1938) has maintained the critical role that land plays in Gikuyu Indigenous learning to maintain that the cultural and historical traditions of the Gikuyu people have been verbally handed down from generation to generation (Preface xvi). Further as a boy, he received the usual education of Gikuyu boys and the legends

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in his book are some of those that he absorbed from his elders during early training in custom and tradition, which he later used to relate to his juniors as an evening amusement. The terms of kinship are those which he heard and used for years among my own kinsmen (preface. xiii). This account speaks to orality as the medium of transmission of Indigenous knowledge, the intergenerational transfer of knowledge, and the interconnection between knowledge and cultural teachings. Land therefore not just is the source of Indigenous knowledges but also constitutes Indigenous pedagogy.

The Primacy of Land in Indigenous Spirituality, Medicine, and Healing While no universal singular definition of spirituality exists, scholars have defined spirituality as implying a life force, God, Creator, the higher self or purpose, or the Great Mystery (Wane, 2019) and as a higher force (Battiste, 2000). It has also been defined as a way of living, a method, and a practice through which one lives and aspires toward his or her goals and ambitions and is connected to the collective well-being of society (Wane, 2019). For Wane, spirituality encompasses a sense of wholeness, healing, and the interconnectedness of all things. She draws the connection between land and Indigeneity to maintain that Indigeneity, land, and spirit are all ephemeral, abundant, and intertwined that Indigeneity is bestowed upon us by the land and expressed culturally through ancestral linkages with the land. For Wane, the land is spirit made manifest (Wane, 2019, p. 11). Spirituality has also been defined as encompassing relationships between living souls and the living dead, self, and collective empowerment, humility, metaphysical, and psychic powers, healing, and wholeness. It defines interactions between body, mind, and soul as they relate to values, beliefs, and ideas of integrity and dignity shaping both individual and collective consciousness into unified existence (Dei, 2002). Indigenous philosophies and ways of knowing connect land and place, spirit, body, mind, and soul in the process of knowledge production (Dei, 2008) with land depicted as the site of knowing, spiritual identity, and being. Spirituality constitutes the axis on which Indigenous knowledges and the substructure for understanding the social, cultural, economic, material, political, physical, and metaphysical realms rests (Adefarakan, 2015).

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In Africa, Indigenous Africans worshiped and venerated everything under, on, between, and over the earth and heavens and involved deeper human values, attitudes, beliefs, and practices, based on various African worldviews (Karangi, 2005; Kenyatta, 1938; Mbiti, 1990). For example, Mbiti maintains that connection with ancestors is through spirit and that the spirit world provides the link between the living, the dead, the natural, and the supernatural world. It is through spirit that ancestors communicate with the living through dreams and divination in a cyclical relationship of reciprocity and stewardship (Mbiti, 1990). In Indigenous African thought, African spirituality hinges on the maintenance and renewal of relationships with the land, the environment, plants, and animals (Solomon & Wane, 2005), while Indigenous ceremonial healing practices, rituals, and healing sites are sacred and connect to the land. Consequently, going back to the land is interpreted as spiritually connecting with the land (Robbins & Dewar, 2011) and is the site of Indigenous medicine and healing (Wane, 2014; Wane & Solomon, 2005; Karanja, 2019; Randall & Warner, 2013). Land, Indigenous Culture, Language, and Identity Culture has been described by Said (1983) as the way in which all knowledge is transmitted presently, from one generation to the next, and includes ‘hopeful, uplifting, and regenerative aspects of knowing as well as the contrapositive and dehumanizing factors’. He maintains that culture provides a sense of belonging and relates to one’s sense of nation, home, community, and belonging, allowing people to interact meaningfully within their diverse environments and with each other (Said, 1983, p. 12). ‘African culture has been defined as covering various things including the way people live, behave, and act, as well as their physical and intellectual achievements expressed through dance, music, drama, etc., in social organizations and political systems, in religion, ethics, morals and philosophy, customs and institutions of the people, their values and laws, and in their economic life’ (Mbiti, 1969, cited in Wane, 2019 p.12) In this chapter, culture is defined in the context of land and Indigeneity as a shared body of knowledge that constitutes a powerful lens for reading the world and as the starting point for discourses on knowledge production, identity, and development and is not necessarily as much about sameness as it is about a shared body of knowledge (Adefarakan, 2015). Land is connected to Indigenous peoples’ cultural identity, identity formation,

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and agency (Emery, 1997). Indigenous people’s self-definition is rooted in their existence as peoples or nations as expressed in their own languages, culture, community, and relationship with the land (Kingsbury, 1998). Indigenous identity is considered a critical tool for Indigenous resistance and recognition (Alfred & Corntassel, 2005, p.  599; Emeagwali & Dei, 2014). Long-term residency on ancestral land is theorized as the bedrock and source of Indigenous worldview, knowledge, and cultural identity (Shihza, 2013) with land and relationships with the land seen as crucial sources of Indigenous African identity (Emeagwali & Dei, 2014). The connection between land and Indigenous African culture is asserted by scholars who maintain that land is the source of a community’s culture and that the survival of that culture is heavily dependent on protection of Indigenous lands where land is perceived not just for use but also for sustaining a community’s whole livelihood and culture. For Indigenous Africans, their relationship with the land is central to their collective identity and well-being, and as such, people, land, and culture are intimately linked with land expressing the rights of communities to self-preservation (Barume, 2010). A strong link has also been established between land as the source of Indigenous languages (Wildcat, 2014). Language is considered part and parcel of the identity and culture of the people who speak it (Adefarakan, 2015). It is often oral and symbolic, and as the medium through which culture is transmitted and passed on to the next generation, it is critical to Indigenous knowledge production (Battiste, 2002). Language and orality are significant in Indigenous identity formation, knowledge production, and transmission to future generations in the context of relationships with one’s environment and spirituality (Castellano, 2000; Dei, 2000; Idemudia, 2000). Marie Battiste speaks to the sacredness of Indigenous languages and maintains that languages house the lessons and knowledge that constitute the cognitive-spiritual powers of people in specific places as forms of spiritual identity, creating powerful cognitive bonds that impact all Indigenous aspects of life (Battiste, 2000). In this section, I have highlighted some specific examples of how land is connected to and is the basis of Indigenous epistemologies, pedagogies, and ontologies, speaking the significance of these features in informing the culture, knowledge, and identity of Indigenous African people. While examples provided are by no means exhaustive, they highlight the significance of what is threatened or impacted by land loss and alienation from

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the land and demonstrate why land means more than its territorial and spatial geography. Colonial land theft orchestrated through colonial laws, land policies, and violence, as well as contemporary neo-colonial globalization projects including development, modernization, international trade liberalization, foreign direct investments in land, internationalization programs, enduring colonial education programs, etc., disrupted and continue to disrupt and alienate Indigenous people’s embodied understandings of and relationships with the land.

The Art of Land Dispossession and the Colonial Project The impact of colonialism and neo-colonialism on land and on Indigenous Kenyans has been widely theorized in the literature (Elkins, 2005; Kameri-­ Mbote, 2010; Kanogo, 1987; Kanyinga, 2009; Mukaru-Nganga, 1978; Ndege, 2009; Okoth-Ogendo, 1991, 2002; Rodney, 1972; Wa Thiong’o, 1986; Wily, 2010; Wakhungu & Nyukuri, 2008; Swynnerton, 1954, etc.). It suppressed Indigenous tenure systems, asserted jurisdictional authority over Indigenous people and their lands (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002), and with its saturation of power and discursive authority over knowledge creation, ownership, and validation suppressed Indigenous languages and cultures (Wa Thiong’o, 1978). Also, colonialism resulted in Indigenous African people’s alienation from their Indigenous knowledges that gave them the power and permission to recover their traditional ways of knowing, thinking, and problem solving (Wane, 2013). Colonialism was not content with stealing Indigenous Africans’ lands (Okoth-Ogendo, 1991) but also ensured that Indigenous tenure systems that ensured user and access rights to people other than the land holder were abolished (Sorrenson, 1967). Application of colonial land laws such as the now repealed Registered Land Act (Cap 300) and land policies (Swynnerton Plan, 1954) that have continued to this day (Cohen, 1980) do not recognize customary land rights (Kameri-Mbote, 2009) that ensured everyone, irrespective of status, had access to land. Also, Indigenous land access institutions that ensured access such as land lease and redemption, concurrent land use practices, Athami and Ahoi land access institutions, communal access to salt licks and wood-lots and burial and ceremonial/ritual sites were lost, as lands in which they were situated became enclosed by registered private landowners (Sorrenson, 1967, p. 221).

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Colonial land loss and dispossession were orchestrated through rigorous legal and administrative machinery that included the use of English language and laws that changed how Indigenous people understood and related to land. Examples include what I refer to as the language and art of dispossession consisting of the application of terms like terra nullius to land belonging to Indigenous Kenyans, the transformation of Indigenous land rights to customary land rights, communal tenure to community land rights, land rights to legal and property rights, land holding to tenure, and the application of the English Commons doctrine to Indigenous lands, among others. Where these strategies were resisted, brutal force and violence were applied excessively (Elkins, 2005: Kanogo, 1978; Mukaru-­ Nganga, 1978). Consequently, while the law became a tool of colonial dispossession of lands (Kameri-Mbote, 2006; Okoth-Ogendo, 1991; Ndulo, 2011), it is argued that land loss and displacement from their lands were probably the most seminal losses suffered under colonialism (Kanyinga, 2009; Kenyatta, 1938). By the end of colonial rule in Kenya, all land in Kenya that were not under freehold title (settler and local elite owned) which included all customary lands belonged to the British Crown as Crown land. Post-independence land dispensation regime in Kenya has inherited and continues to adopt and use land laws and policies that have their origin in colonial English law through the acceptance of the sanctity of private property ownership that has validated both settler and local colonial land appropriation (Kanogo, 1987; Mweseli, 2000). This includes the now-repealed Registered Land Act of 1963 that served as a tool for protection and entrenchment of colonial title and fraudulently acquired land in the post-colony. Not to mention its role in serving to ignore and extinguish all customary land rights in areas which had been consolidated and registered (Allot, 1988; Okoth-Ogendo, 1986, 1987). The continuation of colonial land titling programs has become official government policy on land management (Kanogo, 1987, p.  129) while land ownership has become tied up with politics, ethnicity, and massive corruption that involved massive land grabbing of public lands and forests (Platteau, 1996), massive land accumulation, and speculation resulting in absentee land-lordship holding large tracts of land that has remained idle notwithstanding severe landlessness and food shortages (Wanjala, 2000). Consequently, the land question in Kenya has remained unresolved and with tragic consequences (Shanguhyia & Koster, 2014).

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Scholars have maintained that despite colonial violence and subversion, Indigenous tenures, norms, and structures have demonstrated great resilience (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002). Due to the embeddedness of land in social relations, their inclusive rather than exclusive character and the kinship system that is the primary organizing order for access to land. Despite rigid application of laws and government’s attempt to regulate land rights, access in many rural areas has continued to rely on Indigenous features such as social identity and status (Whitehead & Tsikata, 2003). This resilience is also attributed to factors including the fact that access and control deriving from property rights does not necessary vest or involve vesting full power over land because in most rural communities, power is vested in social relations and not in title or the market. This is very true of land in Gikuyu country where, despite the landowner holding title, it is almost impossible to sell clan and family land to strangers and loans granted under such title have become almost irredeemable in cases of default. Also, land rights under Indigenous title accrue not from ‘paper title’ but from affiliation, allegiance to the group or by birth with distinctions made between access and control over land with access rights being negotiated on the lines of social identity and other rights (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002). This has applied the metaphor of a dangerous weed to the resilience of Indigenous tenure, arguing that despite the suppression and subversion by the colonial project, Indigenous tenure went underground where it continued to grow. Further Indigenous tenure values and institutions have started to be seen as still providing the only meaningful framework for organizing the social and economic livelihoods of the Africans. State and citizen recognition of the enduring importance of Indigenous tenure has resulted in constitutional reforms. The Kenya Constitution (2010) recognizes customary land tenure and acknowledges that all land in Kenya belongs to the people of Kenya collectively as a nation, as communities, and as individuals. The Kenya Constitution recognizes that ‘community land’, which includes ancestral lands, ‘shall vest in and be held by communities’ (Government of Kenya, 2010, pp. 42, 45). While this is a progressive move, it nevertheless raises pertinent questions of how terms like ‘People’ are to be interpreted and construed in the context of foreign corporations (Alden-Wily, 2012).

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Conclusion This chapter has been anchored on the premise that land is critical to Indigenous identities and ways of being. Further, this chapter shows that despite the violence of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and their enduring colonizing logics, Indigenous identities and institutions are resilient and are beginning to resurge and assert themselves to take their rightful place as embodied in the lives of Indigenous people. While acknowledging the historical and contemporary human rights violations perpetrated on communities who are considered ‘Indigenous’ by the wider communities in their own countries and under international law, this chapter attributes Indigeneity to all people of African descent whether they are locally or internationally situated. In this sense, land is theorized as all land that makes up the nation-state that belonged to the people of African descent in the nation-state or respective communities in Africa before colonization. The chapter also takes the position that colonialism did not end with the achievement of independence from colonial rule and has continued its colonizing logics with new and more sinister colonizing logics (Bulhan, 2015). The resilience of Indigenous land rights and Indigeneity speaks to the potential to resurge and reclaim the lands as bequeathed to us by our ancestors that we should hold in trust for future generations. As an ancestral Trust, African lands do not belong to the present generation to give away, trade-off, or destroy. Our relationship with the land and how we understand it is reposed and embodied in our psychic memory. Although disrupted by colonialism and threatened by neo-liberal formulations, like the proverbial weed (Okoth-Ogendo, 2002), it is alive and will resurge and bloom as it always was. Mweseli (2000) argues that ‘recognition of indigenous peoples’ laws, traditions and customs’ is crucial to the protection of their land and resource rights…because Indigenous peoples’ rights over land ‘flow not only from possession, but also from indigenous peoples’ articulated ideas of communal stewardship over land and a deeply felt spiritual and emotional nexus with the earth and its fruits’ (Mweseli, 2000, p. 404). Indigenous knowledges are dynamic and change over time and do not sit in pristine fashion outside of the effects of other knowledges (Dei, 2000). This dynamism calls for asking pertinent questions: How would our Indigenous conceptions of and relationships with the land have evolved if colonialism did not happen? How can we resurge and reclaim our ancestral heritage from the lavages of colonial and neo-colonial forces?

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As Indigenous Africans, how we look at and understand land and our relationship with it will determine our capacity and worthiness to undertake the duty and responsibility bestowed on us by our ancestors to hold it in trust for future generations. It is a sacred responsibility we should not abdicate. In the next chapter, I offer some recommendations for how we can continue to perform that sacred responsibility.

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CHAPTER 17

Conclusion Njoki Nathani Wane and Babere Kerata Chacha

This book has tried to give variety of themes and topics ranging from practice and theory to personal narratives of the significance of decolonizing studies and at the same time try to clarify decolonial efforts and call to transform higher education from its anti-Black and anti-African foundation, offering insights and hope from universities across the USA, Canada, and Africa. Contributors in the book are university staff that seek to challenge contemporary colonial education and subsequently seek to implore diverse ways of decolonizing curricula, structures, research, pedagogy, and community relationships (Shizha, Chimwe, 2009). Ultimately, this study delves into past structural transformations, thereby calling for a global commitment that seeks to develop the indigenous yet African-led higher education systems that aim at fostering multilingual communities, local approaches, and knowledge of the global platforms. A shift from a

N. N. Wane (*) Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] B. K. Chacha Laikipia University, Nyahururu, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3_17

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western-­centric lens to a more multi-faceted African-centrism showcases the authors’ reclaim of decoloniality, especially from co-optation. Thus, it serves to reposition African intellectualism at the center stage of higher education across the globe to aid in sustaining Ubuntu-based humanity (Ramose, 1999, 2014). Calls to decolonize knowledge production have been on the rise, especially in discussions that constantly focus on transforming the African continent’s curriculum content. Hence, it correlates with the realization of having development outcomes being championed at specific levels of the knowledge production process and failing to contribute significantly to the knowledge generation process, which is equivalent to forfeiture of the possible influence on outcomes. Educational systems globally are primarily based on diverse colonial models, with a small fraction of the Africans making inputs at the theorization level that eventually forms the developmental outcomes and models. However, the relatively minor faction of Africans who contribute to knowledge generation often have their inputs and views predominantly mediated by the western paradigms and models consistent with the knowledge centers in the northern hemisphere where many African thinkers have been trained and educated. As a result, it creates a forum for the generation of decolonized Afrocentric knowledge production, which can probably be best championed at this stage in African knowledge centers and higher-learning institutions. Calls for decolonization are deemed suitable for marking the beginning of freedom. Failure to embrace the decolonization knowledge may lead to Africans feeling that their liberation is inchoate and their efforts to shed the rather western domination as futile. Calls for decolonization can be equated to searching for an African identity that significantly correlates to the hegemony of the west (Badat, 2010; Soudien, 2008). Steve Biko aimed to ensure that Black people understood their culture and origin adequately in a bid to affirm their Black identity. These are embedded in the struggle of decolonizing and searching for African values and identities. The contributors to this book strived to define what Africa and the African diaspora, their strategic partners and scholars in African Studies require for a society devoid of colonialism and ready for a renewed Africa. Most have focused on what needs to be revisited or done and updating our understanding of the discussions and philosophies regarding decolonization and Pan-Africanism (Samkange, 1980, p. 38). Others have focused on the relevance and significance of notions like the African renaissance and the role played by diverse stakeholders such as

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churches, African governments, cultural organizations, schools, and universities, among others, in guaranteeing there is adequate production of decolonized Afrocentric knowledge that is integral in advancing the development of the African continent making it a primary global player. On the other hand, this book has explored various ways regarding decolonization and decoloniality provided the liberationist knowledge aids in questioning and replacing the hegemony imposed on Africa by the western knowledge systems. Therefore, it critically examines the silencing and exclusion of subalterns’ voices, especially in global knowledge production, and the related far-reaching implications of this for policy and pedagogy. The global North has seen an increased concentration of global power where there has been a validation of the monopoly of knowledge and its universality and centrality by the White and Eurocentrism supremacy. Nonetheless, African perspectives have increasingly become marginalized in research, an element that has served to create problems relating to the continent’s misrepresentation (Adeyemi & Adeyinka, 2002, pp. 223–240). Thus, this forms a challenge regarding the elimination of the vestiges of colonialism in the research methodologies. Colonialism is not only a historical phenomenon but an ethnocentric continuum that dominates various aspects of the present life, human existence threshold, and a monopoly of dominant epistemology and development activities. This book has provided an overview of a balanced yet feasible decoloniality that is all-inclusive and an aggregate of divergent perspectives, including subaltern sexualities thought and decolonial feminists. Moreover, it deploys a holistic approach that seeks to critique the limitations of decoloniality, the impediments that led to the failure of the late twentieth-century decoloniality struggle and the associated problems to present African resistance to academic decoloniality. African futurism, an advanced stage of decoloniality, entails an application of indigenous or traditional instruments relating to cohesion and articulation, such as Afro-spirituality, folklore, techno-scientific innovations, and myths deployed in their capacity to harness, drive, and further actualize probable future possibilities. Revival or reclamation of African indigenous culture present in African education should not be viewed as a basis for replacing western education systems which are entrenched in Africa; however, it should be considered as a response to the dominant epistemologies and discourses that have marginalized African ways of knowing (Adeyemi & Adeyinka, 2002, pp. 223–240).

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We have thus suggested “critical platforms of education and culture that are epistemologically inclusive…of African knowledge, philosophical traditions and learning realities” (Mbembe, 2015, p. 20). The process of reclaiming culture in African education is integral in deconstructing Eurocentric schooling programs by placing an emphasis on indigenous philosophies approaches and their contents. The decolonization of African education systems seeks to ensure that the rather pragmatic educational programs are culturally responsive to the present African needs (Shizha, 2010). Cultural reclamation denotes a cultural renaissance that has stemmed from the realization that contemporary African education is an integral relic of the historical colonial past. Colonial education sought to guarantee economic exploitation and assimilation of African indigenous cultures to western cultural realities. The post-colonial African education presently serves to recreate these realities, such as the gap between identity crisis and identity perception regarding what schools teach and the experiences of a large faction of students, especially in their home settings. There is a relatively limited direct relationship between what is in the pedagogical practices, curriculum, and the everyday lived experiences of students. Schools have self-identities and teachers continue constructing what are mostly deemed incompatible with teachers’ perceptions of their students. Thus, schools are perceived as platforms for creating crises bound to lead to social antagonisms, which are further showcased by students’ failure to see the relevance and purpose of school knowledge as far as their communities are concerned. Nonetheless, external knowledge is not congruent to the experience that the students have garnered, an element that dislocates and is disruptive to their cultural lives and has the potential to negatively impact their self-affirmation and holistic life experiences.

Future Trajectories Universities occupy pride of place in the history of decolonization on the continent and its diaspora. Universities should opt to primarily challenge the epistemological and curricular assumptions that were colored by colonial education; institutions in Africa have come a long way in facilitating new prospects of knowing that resonate with African dynamics. African models have been inspirational to other institutions that have subsequently been established in Africa as bases for mainstreaming the African knowledge systems and transforming them into the rich confluence of Black

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studies through enriching the global intellectual enterprise (Kapoor & Shizha, 2010). Nonetheless, there exist subsisting components regarding the tasks that continuously challenge scholars globally to reflect on and scrutinize areas relating to theoretical and empirical inquiries concerning the sustainability of the decolonization agenda. Robert Young (2012) contends that even though the post-colonial project appears to have outlived its intended relevance, such that it should be declared dead and buried, the ‘post-colonial relics’ remain contentious since there are several unfinished aspects that evoke memories of colonial violence and subsequent resonation with present challenges (Battiste, M. & J. Y., 2013). Taking ‘decolonial remains’ as a reference this study has been able to establish the diverse ways knowledge production for the epistemological liberation of Africa and Africa liberation is vital in offering a generative moment in reinventing the continent for development. Thus, the main concern relates to how African epistemologies can be mobilized mainly in the twenty-first century for development. What are the futurist orientations of decolonization in African Studies? Are the underlined assumptions’ theoretical and empirical implications for knowledge production transformable to epistemologies? These questions and more will aid in constituting the conference’s focus on conceived future trajectories. The papers are, in sum, a compendium of multidisciplinary approaches that aid in facilitating conversations across a broader spectrum of disciplines, including humanities, medicine, social sciences, and engineering, among others, in generating robust engagements. Further, let’s agree that decolonization refers to undoing colonial rule over subordinate countries. It should go beyond that and address the idea of alluding to the fact that being colonized portrayed us as inferior. Therefore, decolonization offers a powerful metaphor to individuals who want to critique the dominant culture and various positions of power. African studies across the continent and beyond are still founded on Western epistemologies and subsequently dominated by voices disengaged and distant from the realities of Africa. The outlined blind spots have often led to evasion, self-deception, and misrepresentation. The argument’s central focus entails a searing critique of the role of classifying a perceived non-African scholar in the epistemological development of the field. However, as the epistemic decolonization debate continues, we are witnessing a greater risk of the entire project getting muddled in racial politics in the future.

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Racism exists in our current societies. It is embedded in dynamics, knowledge, and power configurations. In knowledge, race alludes to the domain that serves to approve the comparative studies with Europe as a template and others being measured against. However, race helped to mobilize and be deployed in the social classification processes of the people and the corresponding imagined differential ontological densities. The colonization of humans emerged into “human” and “subhuman.” Those who were denied humanity automatically were denied epistemic virtue. The unfolding of Euromodernity has portrayed race as an organizing principle of knowledge hierarchization and power construct. Thus, it isn’t easy to run away from it. There is a need to confront it head-on. However, conducting research, writing, and making publications about African studies, it is difficult to ring-fence the field given the challenges posed by issues of race. African Studies is a vast intellectual field that encompasses empire studies, Continental Africans, and African diasporas (both old and new). The most important aspect involves the liberation of African studies from the prison of “areas studies” and the resilient and invisible White gaze. The marginality of Black and African scholars in African studies underscore a consequence of an uneven intellectual division of labor in the current branded global economy of knowledge that cascades from global coloniality. Thus, global coloniality impinges on research resources and endowments and determines which publications matter. Also, it is a determinant of the academic appointments and criteria of evaluation. These are the problems. Decolonization remains as a revolutionary term that has theoretical and practical value. If everyone immediately embraces it, there is a danger that it might be transformed into a metaphor and a buzzword. Decolonization compels us to deal with the patriarchal, human, corporatization radical, power, and ontological questions. All these are essential elements of colonialism baggage. Hence, there is an increasing need to decenter to ensure that other lives can focus on the central idea before disappearing. Nonetheless, coloniality connotes the death of a project. Decolonization is embedded in the decolonization of the colonial wounds that are crying out for healing. Decolonization entails the potentialities and possibilities regarding the creation of another new world. Thus, we must ask questions such as the following as we look forward to filling this yawning gap in African studies. How do the assumptions we have about power affect what we select as problems for research? Who pays for this research? And what does the purposes of research serve?

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Research practice critique can take on the neoliberal globalization agenda in higher education, institutional reliance on private money and an overeagerness to put knowledge at the service of the highest bidder. What relationship does the researcher have with those being researched? Therefore, research should have an action orientation, leading to researchers opting to work with the communities they study and collaboratively seeking to forge a change. Who conducts the research? Decolonizing researchers continuously argue that indigenous communities are often under-represented in academic research communities. As a result, their concerns and voices fail to be heard. Non-indigenous researchers can research indigenous communities, which calls for a more critical analysis of their standpoints and collaborative ways of working. Radical voices often argue that there exist limits on a non-indigenous researcher’s involvement and, subsequently, the fact that researchers should not ‘talk about what they don’t know.’ Are bodies of knowledge distorted? Decolonization researchers implore how discourse constantly affects our perception toward subordinate groups, for example, Said in discussing dominant, sometimes romanticized versions of orientalism in Arabic studies or Fanon in discussing culture, psychotherapy and violence in the particular context of the struggle for Algerian independence. Hence, embracing awareness concerning such distortion and considering alternative or counter-hegemonic sources are necessary. These counter-narratives may have to be sought out. In sum, the value as far as decolonization literature is concerned supersedes the insight it offers to the research of indigenous groups. Decolonization aids in sensitizing us about the existence of dominant discourses and, subsequently, dominant groups’ influence on what / who we research. Hence, it acts as a guide to appealing for a critical yet reflexiveness in the entire research process and provides a timely reminder regarding our assumptions about our rationality derived from literature developed at a particular time and place.

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Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Journal of Education Research, 60(3), 615–618. Kapoor, D., & Shizha, E. (Eds.). (2010). Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education, and culture. Springer. Mbembe, A. (2015). Decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive. Ramose, M. B. (1999). African Philosophy through Ubuntu. Mond Books Publishers. Ramose, M. (2014). Dying a hundred deaths: Socrates on truth and justice. Phronimon, 15(1), 67–80. https://doi.org/10.25159/2413-3086/2213 Samkange, S. J. T. (1980). Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwe indigenous political philosophy. Shizha, E. (2009). Chara chimwe hachitswanyi inda: Indigenizing science education in Zimbabwe. In Education, Participatory Action Research, and Social Change: International Perspectives (pp. 139–153). https://doi.org/10.1057/ 9780230100640 Shizha, E. (2010). Rethinking and reconstituting indigenous knowledge and voices in the academy in Zimbabwe: A decolonization process. In Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education, and culture (pp. 115–129). Palgrave Macmillan US. Soudien, C. (2008). The Southern African comparative and history of education society (SACHES). In Masemann, V., Bray, M., Manzon, M. (eds.), Common interests, uncommon goals. CERC studies in comparative education, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6925-3_26 Young, P. C. (2012). Recursive estimation and time-series analysis: An introduction. Springer Science & Business Media.

Index

A Africa, x, 3, 4, 6, 8–11, 20, 44–56, 60, 80, 103, 139, 151, 166–168, 170–172, 175, 177, 180–182, 184, 185, 192, 218, 236, 284, 294, 314–316, 343 African, vii, viii, x, 1, 17–40, 44–48, 51–55, 60, 62–66, 68, 73, 74, 76, 79–101, 103–108, 111, 112, 114, 115, 118, 120–123, 139, 140, 146, 151–161, 166–187, 192–208, 212–225, 233, 235, 237, 240, 251, 260, 261, 272–275, 277–280, 282–284, 293, 294, 296, 297, 300, 302, 313, 315, 316, 318, 319, 322, 323, 329–331, 333–335, 344–348 Ancestral, 9, 18, 79, 80, 94, 95, 97, 111, 143, 152–156, 158, 161, 166, 167, 174–176, 178, 179, 182, 184, 186, 213, 215, 218–220, 223–224, 233, 238–240, 274, 277–279, 282,

283, 302, 304–306, 314, 316, 319, 320, 323–325, 328, 330, 333, 334 C Colonial, vii, x, 1–5, 7, 9, 11, 19, 33, 37, 39, 45, 46, 81–84, 87–90, 92, 96, 106, 111–112, 114–116, 118, 131–148, 151–161, 166–187, 193–196, 199, 200, 214, 215, 233, 235, 242–244, 247, 261, 272, 275, 279, 284, 291, 292, 296, 297, 299–302, 306, 313, 314, 316–319, 322, 325, 331–334, 343, 344, 346–348 Colonialism, ix, 4, 5, 18, 33, 44, 45, 87, 93, 111, 112, 116–118, 120, 132, 141–143, 146, 148, 155, 157, 159, 193, 195, 213–219, 247, 253, 295, 298, 300, 302, 314, 316, 317, 331, 332, 334, 344, 345, 348

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 N. N. Wane (ed.), Education, Colonial Sickness, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40262-3

351

352 

INDEX

Community, 6, 8, 9, 11, 19, 21–23, 32, 47–56, 60, 62–65, 68–76, 82, 86, 89–91, 93, 94, 96, 99–101, 103–123, 131–135, 139–148, 152, 153, 158–160, 167, 169, 171, 173, 177, 182, 194, 196, 197, 199, 215, 218, 221, 222, 232, 234, 239, 241–243, 245, 251, 252, 260, 272, 273, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 290, 293, 295, 297, 298, 300, 302, 303, 305–308, 314–327, 329, 330, 332–334, 343, 346, 349 Contemporary, 4, 7, 11, 48, 49, 62, 76, 94, 264, 277, 294, 313–335, 343, 346 Cultures, vii, 1, 18, 45, 63, 80–81, 105, 132, 152, 167, 170, 179, 184, 186, 187, 193, 212, 232, 263, 272, 295, 315, 344

201, 203, 215, 220, 221, 224, 235, 265, 266, 293–295, 298, 303, 307, 324, 328, 329, 333, 346 Education, x, 2, 4, 5, 11, 18–20, 38, 39, 44–56, 79–101, 104–108, 111–123, 134, 135, 143, 154, 155, 157, 166, 173, 174, 179, 187, 192–208, 220, 221, 236, 244, 249, 250, 259, 297, 316, 327, 331, 343–346, 349 Eurocentric, ix, 11, 18, 44, 52, 55, 76, 115, 166, 172, 193, 195, 198, 201, 202, 205, 220, 224, 233, 235, 263, 271, 278, 283, 346

D Decolonizing, vii, 2–7, 20, 39, 51, 114, 119, 156, 204, 281, 295, 296, 343, 344, 349 Diaspora, 8, 9, 39, 79–101, 140, 159–161, 167, 172, 176, 178–182, 184, 193, 208, 219, 265–267, 280, 282–284, 344, 346, 348 Diverse, x, 3, 5, 8, 10, 47, 50, 51, 54, 55, 63, 80, 153, 166, 186, 192, 196, 205, 218, 251, 252, 273, 294, 297, 306, 329, 343, 344, 347

G Gender, 9, 60, 62, 63, 69, 73, 74, 86–87, 103, 104, 107, 114, 134, 139, 244, 268, 281 Globalization, 10, 307, 331, 349 Grassroots, 103, 104, 108

E Economic, vii, 1–3, 6, 9, 39, 56, 60, 62, 67, 69, 72–73, 87, 94, 98, 103, 104, 108, 112, 114, 120, 133, 140, 152, 153, 196, 197,

F Feminism, 8, 282

H History, ix, x, 2, 4–10, 18–23, 25, 26, 33, 35–40, 44–47, 53, 55, 74, 85–87, 91, 92, 96, 107, 111–112, 115, 120, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158, 166, 170, 179, 187, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 201, 202, 212, 214, 244, 245, 260–262, 265, 267, 271, 272, 274, 275, 277, 278, 281, 282, 284, 285, 290, 305, 314, 346 Holistic, 106, 113, 119, 235, 300, 326, 345, 346

 INDEX 

I Identities, ix, x, 10, 18, 19, 22, 23, 45–47, 81, 85, 93, 94, 100, 106, 110, 115, 139, 152, 154–156, 158, 160, 161, 192–208, 215, 221, 232–233, 235, 244, 252, 265–269, 271–275, 278–280, 283, 284, 293–296, 305, 307, 313–317, 323–325, 327–331, 333, 334, 344, 346 Inclusion, 9, 103, 104, 132, 196 Indigenous, vii, 1, 18, 45, 62, 64, 66–68, 87, 103, 131–148, 151–161, 166–187, 193, 214, 235, 284, 293, 296, 300, 301, 306, 308, 313–335, 343 Individual, 5, 10, 47–50, 52–55, 64, 106, 110–112, 133, 135, 138, 140, 141, 144, 148, 152, 155, 156, 159, 178, 187, 192, 193, 201, 202, 204, 208, 214, 218, 224, 231–234, 237, 245, 252, 264, 273, 277, 292–295, 297, 298, 304, 307, 319, 320, 322, 326, 328, 347 K Kumina, 10, 11 L Leadership, 6, 25–27, 50–52, 54–55, 104, 105, 108, 109, 115, 116, 221, 235, 319 O Oppression, viii, 6, 10, 33, 80, 100, 158, 159, 194, 200, 201, 213, 233, 244, 245, 250, 260, 261, 265, 267–269, 275, 278

353

P Patriarchy, 103–123, 194 Power, viii, 3–7, 9, 19, 23, 25, 26, 29, 39, 45, 51, 54, 55, 63, 70, 74, 76, 82, 84, 85, 88, 94–96, 111, 115, 116, 131–142, 147, 148, 158, 168–170, 174, 192–194, 197, 214, 221, 223, 232–234, 238, 239, 243–245, 250, 252, 263, 266–268, 275, 278, 279, 282–285, 293, 295, 296, 298, 301, 308, 315, 318, 324, 325, 328, 330, 331, 333, 345, 347, 348 R Racialized, 8, 18, 19, 39, 100, 116, 138, 266 Resistance, 3, 10, 36, 87, 90, 131, 134, 139, 192–208, 214, 233, 240, 243, 245, 252, 272, 275, 283, 284, 295, 313–335, 345 S Social, 5, 8, 9, 18, 19, 21, 39, 53–55, 60–63, 65, 67–70, 73–75, 81, 82, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 108, 111–113, 115, 121, 133, 139, 140, 152, 153, 157, 158, 161, 169–171, 174, 193–197, 200, 203, 214, 215, 231, 240, 243, 250, 265, 266, 272, 273, 275, 279–283, 291, 292, 294–298, 301, 303, 307, 308, 314, 318, 319, 324, 326, 328, 329, 333, 346–348 Society, 3, 5, 7, 10, 21, 25, 29, 46, 47, 50, 53–56, 60–64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 82, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96, 99, 106, 108,

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INDEX

112, 115, 117, 134–136, 138, 139, 141, 143, 146, 147, 152–155, 157, 186, 187, 193, 194, 200, 203, 205, 212, 213, 216, 217, 233, 237, 239, 243, 244, 250, 252, 261, 264, 268, 273, 280, 283, 295, 308, 314–316, 326, 328, 344, 348 Soul, x, 10, 97, 143, 145–147, 168, 216, 231–253, 259–269, 277, 278, 296, 323, 328 Spirituality, 1, 10, 53, 56, 94, 95, 100, 113, 118, 123, 143, 148, 156–158, 168, 169, 178, 199, 204, 208, 216–219, 231–243, 251–253, 278–280, 282, 284, 294, 296, 300, 302, 318, 324, 326, 328–331, 345 T Traditional, 9, 46, 53–55, 63, 73, 76, 86, 98, 103, 104, 111, 119, 135, 136, 139, 152, 153, 158, 159, 168, 169, 171, 186, 187, 192, 220, 233, 236, 239, 242, 249, 251, 272–274, 278, 281, 282,

292, 297, 305, 306, 318, 319, 323, 326, 331, 345 U Ubuntu, 8, 9, 44–56, 99, 103–123, 232, 235–239, 241, 344 W Western, 3, 8, 9, 11, 19, 20, 37, 39, 40, 46, 50, 65, 74, 82–84, 90, 106–108, 110, 113, 115–117, 122, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 147, 193, 194, 198, 200, 201, 205, 215, 218, 220, 231, 235–237, 247, 252, 262, 269, 272, 277, 280–282, 284, 295, 314–318, 323, 344–347 Westernization, 9 Wisdom, x, 147, 168, 171, 208, 215, 220, 236, 238, 240, 245, 247, 272, 278, 281, 296, 300, 326 Woman, 19, 25, 46, 60–75, 85, 99, 103–123, 184, 186, 194, 196, 197, 212, 214, 233, 237, 242, 243, 261, 271, 285, 325