The OATHmeal: Decolonizing, not the New Coconut Water
“Buenos dias and welcome to the OATHmeal! What is the OATHmeal you ask? Well, it’s a quick, delicious, and nutritious start to your day as you go out as your WHOLElistic self aligned to systemic change.
But this is no simple instant OATHmeal. This has been intentionally stewed with care so that it powers your knowing and doing. It can be informative and interesting, but more importantly, it offers an invitation to action. Here is what we’re serving up for today:”
Ingredients:
An open mind
A readiness for reflection
Instructions:
There was a time when coconut water was the hot new thing, both in terms of hype but also in terms of it being added to many other things. And in some ways it still is, though I think mushrooms have taken that place (as I take sip of my mushroom coffee.)
Thus the title of today’s Oathmeal and how Decolonizing was showing up all over the place and on many things, like Decolonizing Your Syllabus to Decolonizing Your Diet.
In response, this led to the landmark piece by Tuck, Eve & Wayne Yang, K. (2012) “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization” as a way to keep the conversation focused on #LandBack and not get lost in metaphors that did not honor that alignment to Native Sovereingty and Reconciliation. They note:
“Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking",” turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue futurity.”
At the same time, I think that it’s helpful to interrogate the models that frame our relationships with each other and the land, and this is where it’s still useful to look at what “colonization” means and how it shows. Thus, I find value in thinking more broadly about “decoloniatlity.”
As Puerto Rican philosopher and professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres notes in “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality”
“In contrast, coloniality and decoloniality refer to the logic, metaphysics, ontology, and matrix of power created by the massive processes of colonization and decolonization. Because of the long-time and profound investment of what is usually referred to as Europe or Western civilization in processes of conquest and colonialism, this logic, metaphysics, ontology, and matrix of power is intrinsically tied to what is called “Western civilization” and “Western modernity.” In fact, the modern West, its hegemonic discourses, and its hegemonic institutions are themselves a product, just like the colonies, of coloniality. If coloniality refers to a logic, metaphysics, ontology, and a matrix of power that can continue existing after formal independence and desegregation, decoloniality refers to efforts at rehumanizing the world, to breaking hierarchies of difference that dehumanize subjects and communities and that destroy nature, and to the production of counter-discourses, counter-knowledges, counter-creative acts, and counter-practices that seek to dismantle coloniality and to open up multiple other forms of being in the world.”
Here to me is an invitation that both honors Land Back as Decolonization while we also engage in Decoloniality that shifts from a colonial logic as the dominant and default to a logic that reconnects us to the land. As Dr. Rupa Marya notes:
“To me, to be colonized means to be disconnected and disintegrated—from our ancestry, from the earth, from our indigeneity, our earth-connected selves. We all come from earth-connected people, people who once lived in deep connection to the rhythms of nature.
I believe it is not a coincidence that the colonization of this land happened at the same time that Europeans were burning hundreds of thousands of witches, those women who carried the traditional indigenous knowledge of the tribes of Europe.”
- Dr. Rupa Marya
This doesn’t mean there cannot be value in models grounded in colonial logic (e.g. The Western European model of “Science”)-- they can provide useful information and data. But they can leave out Other Ways of Knowing and Being that can be crucial to healthy relationships for ourselves and the land, especially in the face of our climate crisis. As Plains Miwok researcher Don Hankins notes:
“One way is to embrace traditional Indigenous law, which is rooted in nature and holds individuals accountable for their actions in a reciprocal relationship with environment. Realigning existing policies and management could work to create more resilient systems.”
It’s a logic that has more interdependence and reciprocity woven in, rather than a logic that separates “nature” over there and “humans” over here. That is part of the colonial logic that, aligned with a hierarchy of supremacy, provided the reasoning and justification for “othering” communities and landscapes for extraction and exploitation.
Yeah, it’s not surprising that for some people this opens up their way of viewing things.
So while it might not quite be as impactful to decolonize your playlist, you can consider the role of music and rhythm across cultures not just as entertainment but as additional channels of communication and engagement with reality. Hence, a “rain dance” is not simply a performative act like we might consider “Sweet Caroline” (I know, fighting words for some), it’s part of the axiology and epistemology (how we know and value things) of communicating with nature.
Now that’s Decolonizing Your Mind Bro.
