Month: August 2018

Cultural Citizenship, Spirit of Place

Made in L.A. – Black Angelinos’ Self-Determination to Stay

ADOrduna
Black Angelinos- Black people born and raised or whom have resettled in Los Angeles, are suffering at a deep, collective psychic level – holding on to a life saver ring to resist the current of gentrification and displacement. Holding on to the threads of family, health, community, sense of belonging, and sense of self.
Homelessness; personal, interpersonal, and community violence; mental illness; chronic health condition, low-wage jobs; high wage housing – all symptoms and conditions of systems that disproportionately impact Black lives at every level of the socio-economic level. Black wealth is only 1/20th of white wealth in 2018.
This has been a rising tide. I remember my mom and step-dad moving from L.A. in the early 1990’s to transplant to Tennessee where they bought land, relearned nature, and even opened a cat fish farm. A first-generation Angelino – I also remember telling my mom I would not move back to Cali, it was too depressing.
Yet, the spirit of L.A. called me back home. It is still depressing yet it is in the shadow that we must work and stand strong with a plan to stay so that our sanded footprints in the creation of the L.A. we have today – contributions to the film industry, music, architecture, shape of neighborhoods, government services, and overall diversity – are not erased in the sweeping of an evening breeze.
Yesterday I was inspired by South Central artist Lauren Halsey at a talk about her exhibit – “Space is the Place” in a curated conversation by artist, activist, founder of Dignity Now, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter – Patrisse Cullors. In her piece, artist Halsey owns her space, her right to being, through capturing her stories, life events, relationships, and aspirations of the future in her art installation – a “transcendent space” cast resembling a mausoleum to stand the test of time. It reminded me of mausoleums in a cemetery that i visited in Jacmal, Haiti where a little extra, extra was stored to sustain and protect the soul of community.
In her opening remarks Artivist Cullors shared her story how she was a 4th generation Angelino. That her great-grandparents fled the South to come her for liberation and new opportunities. And yet, with intense – and far too many times lethal -engagement with law enforcement, Black Angelinos are fleeing L.A. to northern and southern So Cal regions or out of state all together. She, however, has made a commitment to stay. So resist. To create. To “recolonize” space and organize community to remind folks of the right to be.
Found throughout the surface inside and out of the installation are images of Halsey’s “love affairs” with the city where she was born and raised. She remembers the names of the women killed by the Grim Reaper, she captures the low riders, hair styles, children preparing for the future, and more. She gives hopes and honors those whose lives were cut short too soon. This is a temporary piece part of the Made in LA 2018 exhibit- up until Sept. 2. A permanent piece will be installed along the Crenshaw line in the next two years.
As I grabbed an uber home, the driver – a single Black father, shared the difficulties of raising a young Black boy in L.A. today. The story was a painful one and the outcome is grime. Yet I thought of the intention behind Lauren’s work and its meaning took on a new sense of urgency for me. In a fight for survival, we must create community reflections of our footprints, our stories, our relationships, our cultural icons- for these are breadcrumbs- icons- on a path toward survival. I encourage all to see this exhibit and take a young one.
In the meantime, during these times, pray for your connection to a higher power. Do not mark your value in comparison to something here on earth. We each have the opportunity to fulfill a unique destiny- we just must cultivate our own head so that our head and feet are in alignment to guide our path. In Ifa, we call our head- not just the physical but the crown chakra – our Ori. We pray so that our Ori’s are strong and in alignment with our higher power. We also pray for the Ori’s of our children and love ones so that they too may be strong. One of my favorite Ori prayers is:
“Ori mi ye o, ja ja fun mi. Eda mi ye o, ja ja fun mi. Ase” – ” Inner Spirit pleace fight, fight for me. Creator please fight, fight for me. May it be so.”
May we fight for our space in the L.A. ecosystem and the protection of our place to Be.
Spirit of Place, Uncategorized

Ode to Orisha Aya, Mother Earth

ADOrduna

Initiation is a starting point with intention. An opening to new knowledge. To begin any process of decolonization, a popular word today in the dialogue around equity, one must begin with identification of the colonizer within oneself.

This process is an iterative process, as encounters with life events raise new levels of consciousness, unpacking layers of subjectivity – programmed by friends, family, religion, language, culture, traditions, society.

I am currently on a journey toward a spiritual initiation that will open up new mysteries to me about the Divine feminine energy of Oshun, a manifestation of earth/water energy in the Yoruba tradition of Ifá. Each day on this journey brings new lessons. Today’s began with a sense of restlessness – possibly the space movement of the recent lunar eclipse and planetary retrogrades – creating a desire to journey onto “Native” land. Native land being a magical place in my imagination.

A few weeks ago, a Tongva Clan Mother opened a workshop on racial equity. While her words were gracious as she told the stories of her people and how she and other Elders are sustaining survival through retaining language, customs, participation and presence, her words haunted me. In all of my work on social justice and action, I recognized my own failure of not seeing my hometown of Los Angeles as sacred, Native Land.

I have recognized the seduction by the Queen of Angeles as she captivated the imagination of the Spaniards and others who have settled on these lands in search of freedom of expression and its shadow in the thin line between financial opportunity and exploitation.

I have even celebrated and honored Queen Calafia, a Black Warrior Amazon Queen that came in a vision to another Spaniard of Moorish influence and for whom that state of California is named after.

Yet when it comes to the First Nations – the Tongva and the Chumash – I segregate their presence in a glass box of time/space separation and objectification. This is even as the constant vision of Cahuilla Clan Mothers weeping in the reeds along a dried riverbed walks with me and the sound of their crying never ceases. And even as the Tsalagi blood of my great-grandfather runs through me, confirmed by my 10% Native American blood by my Ancestor.com DNA.

I never had access to my direct Native heritage outside of family stories and given prejudice toward Blacks within Native communities and shaming of appropriation by Blacks  – associated with complex ideas of racial denialsim – claiming linkages to Indigenous identifies has been risky and taboo. Thus my own cultural biases have objectified the beings of First Nations, romanticizing them in my imagination, yet segregating them in my psyche and creating a cognitive dissonance between what I feel and believe and how I act.

The way I see and how I walk in World has been distorted. No wonder why I tippy-toe verse walking flatfooted with confidence – walking unsure whose maternal belly am I intruding on, whose blood fills the underground waterstreams that nourish the food I eat?

This revelation into the biases of self both appalled me and blessed me. At the same time manifested new meaning to a recent Dafa – Ifá divination reading – that said Aje, Mother Earth is supporting my spiritual journey and I must foreibale – touch my head to the earth – to thank her each and everyday.

In my work as a practitioner/researcher in the area of Black Homelessness Studies, I have held space in my writings for deeper emergence into the understanding of harm created by man-made borders and boundaries on the skin of the Earth. Concretized rivers, barbed wire fences, highways that cut off the migratory flow of neighbor conversations, plastic fauna choking our oceans and the respiratory systems of the fish and mammals who survive off of marine eco-systems, riverbank homes for those experiencing homelessness – marginalized from society – reflect a cultural ignorance of man’s predatory nature.

That predator is within me – unless I use new learning to guide and transform a new vision of how I see the world and a new sense of touch to reimagine how I walk with each step intentionally honoring the sacredness of the space supporting my footsteps.

To this end, I walked with intention this morning to reframe my neighborhood state park into a sacred space – a place of Native land. I realized that I do not have to travel to Joshua Tree, Cuba, Honduras, or Palm Springs (although I dearly love each of these places), in fact I do not have to travel outside of me. Like a spider – Alatakun – sacredness is within me.

Today, I began my journey into Kenneth Hahn State Park with the intention to let Ajalaiye – the Winds of Earth – transform my neural pathways to improve my vision of self – allow me to see through sensuality- not my subjectivity.  Walking with beginner’s mind – taking each step full of awareness and feeling.

The biggest lesson that the Walk-about- taught me today, is beyond every place being sacred space – like a womb, nature records our actions. She is forgiving and in a constant place of change and rebirth. Earth is the lifeforce that sustains us, and will continue to survive even if humans destroy the balanced ecosystem that sustains human life. There is a patiki- praise-song/story of when Oshun – the only feminine energy and the Goddess of creation, rebirth, beauty, fertility – was shunned by the male ironmule – the patriarchy- she left the Earth and went back to heaven. In her absence, the earth perished as crops died, there was no rain, people became famished and began to die en mass, the temperature became unbearably hot. The male leaders rushed to heaven to have an audience with Oludumare – the Supreme Being – to partition his advice. Oludumare responded simply- where is Oshun? At this the men realized their mistake in disrespecting the Divine Feminine and rushed back to earth to call on Oshun’s return and ask for forgiveness.

Humans live in an eco-system of balanced Divine Male and Feminine energies. When one is too great, human life will perish.  We must re-learn how to respect the Mother. we must redevelop our City of Angels as Native Land and reconcile history and present through asking permission to be here.

Below is my a photo-journal of the journey.