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Home.
The Christian narrative is one of perpetual wandering. Cast from Eden they are forever strangers in a strange land.
But for Black and Indigenous people that means something very different. We were not cast from Eden.
The Christian narrative is one of perpetual wandering. Cast from Eden they are forever strangers in a strange land.
But for Black and Indigenous people that means something very different. We were not cast from Eden.
If the original sin of the colonized west is genocide and slavery, that is not our sin. And yet it rendered us homeless as surely as the apple in the Hebrew narrative.
Forcibly displanted again and again (credit to @AnthonyNMorgan for that term) Black and Indigenous people seek to create, and return, home.
I've been fortunate to go home. I left there as a toddler and have talked about the experience of going home the bittersweetness of it because although the land remembered me, the people didn't.
Oh I have cousins that I have a tenuous social media relationship with. My son has a good relationship with some. They know and acknowledge me. But we haven't that connection that comes with shared memories.
Shared memes perhaps. It's something.
Shared memes perhaps. It's something.
When you go home you have zoom these hopes. These ideas of what it will be and it can't possibly live up to that. Tanika talked about going home to Ghana in one episode. The bittersweet of it.
I still recommend it. Go if you can.
I still recommend it. Go if you can.
But those places aren't really home anymore. And for displanted people, the places we go aren't really home anyway.
The Cherokee and others call Oklahoma home, but that's the site of their relocation. They were uprooted and replanted in that place.
It's still home.
The Cherokee and others call Oklahoma home, but that's the site of their relocation. They were uprooted and replanted in that place.
It's still home.
So it's a strange dissonance in church. Singing songs about wandering and seeking a home.
My homelessness is BECAUSE of three church's role in empire and colonization. I can't even call it complicity because the church was an active agent DIRECTING colonization
My homelessness is BECAUSE of three church's role in empire and colonization. I can't even call it complicity because the church was an active agent DIRECTING colonization
It was a Pope who wrote the doctrine of discovery. A doctrine which gave colonizers rights over our land and which liberal favorite Ruth Bader Ginsberg cited to deny an Oneida land claim in 2005.
It was churches who ran residential schools. Whose missionaries paved, and continue to pave, the way for capitalism and colonial governments.
So what does home and home making mean for those whose creation narrative places them in the place to which Christian wanderers came with guns and power to displace and relocate again and again.
It was not our original sin that caused our banishment.
How do we make home?
It was not our original sin that caused our banishment.
How do we make home?
