In search of remembrance

Do you find it easy to feel connected to your ancestors – those distant relatives whose names and stories you do not know? For most of my life, I found it hard to do so, although it was only until recently that I realized why.

Brought on by the competing religious influences of my father and mother, I was forced to navigate a criss-crossing and confusing narrative about the metaphysical realm from an early age. My father practiced Catholicism and believed in an afterlife that required faith in Jesus. My mother practiced traditional Navajo beliefs, but I had difficulty comprehending them because I did not speak the language, Diné Bizaad. It left me with a heavy but universal question; “What happens to us when we die?” With different theological systems, I searched for something that resonated. Eventually, I became mostly agnostic and welcomed the idea of past lives.

Initially, my inclination for past lives made the ancestral ties of my current existence feel moot. I thought, “Why should I honor my direct ancestors any more than my ancestors scattered the world and time over?” In truth, past lives were a way to excuse myself from not being able to access my history. If I pardoned my ignorance of them, it wouldn’t feel as painful when I failed at my attempts to learn who they were. However, a question lingered: “Can I fully know myself if I don’t know them?”

This question unknowingly guided me to my current academic work. What started as a curiosity for a Diné language course has become participation in several Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) classes. In a text book for a NAIS summer course I am currently taking, there is an essay titled, “Before Predator Came.” Written by David Gabbard in 2006, it discusses the dismembering and genocidal effects of colonization on all First Nations people, including the people on Turtle Island (North America) and the pre-Roman, pre-Christian people of Europe. According to Gabbard, dismembering entails disconnecting Indigenous people from all parts of themselves, including the culture of their ancestors. Gabbard, who is non-Indian, argues that this effect can be reversed through acts of decolonization, which include the production and preservation of Native American Studies, as well as the act of remembrance.

He goes on to address how Native American Studies plays its part in decolonization. He writes, “Not only does First Nations scholarship forestall cultural genocide in the sense that it helps maintain an Indigenous culture’s collective memory, but it also sustains their sense of being members of an interdependent life-world characterized by an underlying harmony.” Gabbard then writes why decolonization is not an exclusive act, and that it is important that it be practiced by all. Addressing non-Indian Americans, Gabbard writes, “In the process of healing the wounds left by the sins of our fathers on the backs of Indigenous People across the planet, we must simultaneously heal our own wounded spirits. Left unhealed … those wounds condemn us to perpetuate those same sins generation after generation.”

In turn, participants are able to remember who they are. By decolonizing in tandem, Gabbard argues all are healed through a reconnection to themselves and their shared humanity. Through my own remembrance, it’s as if I knew my foremothers and fathers all along. And if I ever revisit the idea of past lives, it is not to cover up the shame I once felt of my ancestral ignorance.

Below is one of the final poems I wrote in a Diné Poetics class. In the poem, I share a moment from my childhood. It takes place on the way home after a long trip, when my quest to remember was just beginning.