Exploring Ancestral Reclamation

In my own quest for deepening into ancestral reclamation work and learning, in service of healing, of collective liberation, of living into an embodied antiracist white person identity, I’ve been turning to Manda Scott’s Boudica Series of historical fiction.

Wooowwweeeeee what a ride it has been! I want to tell you a bit about it.

These novels follow loosely the true story of the Boudica, the warrior queen of the Eceni people who united the tribes of the so-called British Isles to resist the violent colonization of the Roman Empire on their indigenous lands around 60 CE.

My own ancestors come mostly from the regions we know of as Switzerland and Germany, and in my longing for more understanding of what my people would have been up to before colonization, the Boudica books have given me a precious glimpse.

The author weaves the remnants of story we have from recorded history with her own imagination to depict tribal communities who had an intact connection to land, place, each other and spirit. She explores a vivid dream life and a robust web of community systems (“civilization”?).

I’m noticing myself going into some sort of book report mode here, which really isn’t my point (although the story is worth knowing!). I want to be clear that Scott is not writing literally or exactly about my ancestors, which matters.

What I most want to get across, though, is that these novels have given me a vibrant and palpable window into all that we, as white people descended from Europe, have lost.

It’s felt like a form of grief ritual, as I’ve slowly made my way through the four thick novels of the series, hungry for more of the story, often weeping, needing to pause regularly when it’s been too much.

I’m honestly finding it hard to put to words - the way these books have been a portal into feeling for my ancestors, into the reality that my people were also land-based people, indigenous to a place. And that we lost so so much of our knowing and ways of being to colonization and empire.

I think I’m finding it hard to put to words because it’s something that very much lives in my body - it aches, it’s a longing and a knowing and a heartbreak. I also don’t want to oversimplify it, and I want to honor the complexity of the stories, of all of the different communities of what we now call Europe, of the many different paths these communities took to becoming white.

And, there’s still something potent there. The enormity of the loss feels indescribable, and permanent. We can’t get that back, that being of and from and with a place so deeply for so many generations.

And, we can reckon with it. We can look at the way that we as white people went on to become colonizers, and we can dig into learning more about our ancestors and what was lost along the way to becoming white. We can seek to reconnect to land and place, to ourselves and each other and to spirit, and to make these explorations in ways that don’t involve taking what is not ours.

And this is some of the work that I am so grateful to be up to in the Unraveling Whiteness class. White people coming together to reckon, to grieve, to learn the stories, to move towards new ways of being that unravel white supremacy, and doing so together.

This work is a gift, and I would love to welcome you into it.

Are you longing to deepen into your commitments to racial justice in community with other white folks?

Are you seeking to bring more embodiment to your work for racial justice?

Consider joining us next time we run this class, or bring us into your group!