February 07, 2025

All Pages – Prime Leaderboard Banner
All Pages – Prime Leaderboard Banner
NEW WORKS
All Pages – Skyscraper Right
All Pages – Skyscraper Left

CREATION TO HEAL AND DECOLONIZE

CREATION TO HEAL AND DECOLONIZE

Writer and activist Zainab Amadahy discusses ARTIST as WARRIOR.

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.” Booker Prize winning writer and activist Arundhati Roy

As artists we know that the ability to imagine a better life is the first step in creating one. Many of us allow ourselves to be used by Creator, Ancestors and Helper Spirits to communicate through our work. They are crying out for us to heal our relationships with self, each other and Mother Earth. We will succeed in this because, whether we listen to scientists or Elders or own experience, living with respect for Our Relations is, quite simply, the best way to enjoy life.

The victories of colonization are, in part, based on the ability of Eurocentric artists to create mythology and generate emotionally powerful visions of the “natural” superiority of whites, their cultures and their economy. Films, books and art across disciplines have depicted Indigenous and racialized peoples, our communities and our cultures as everything from savage to stupid to hopelessly naïve, if we’re depicted at all. When there is room in colonial mythology for us to be anything other than a stereotype, we are portrayed as almost equals, only because we have internalized the colonizers’ values and aspire to be just like them. Or worse, we are their mirrors, reminders of their barbarism, out of which they transform themselves to emerge as the heroes of our lives.

Proving the adage that the way to make people accept a lie is to repeat it often, colonizers believe their myths. They have enacted laws, policies and institutions to turn their myths into reality; to frame land theft, the pillaging of resources and ongoing genocide here and around the world as “development”.

As artists we have the choice of playing the game in hopes of becoming rich, famous, egocentric celebrities. Or we can choose to inspire, imagine and generate excitement about what decolonized and healed lives, families and communities might look like – for all peoples.

Many of us have already empowered ourselves to mythologize, creating works that envision justice, healthy communities and respect for the land. We have re-claimed, re-framed and renewed our histories. And we don’t have to make anything up to demonstrate that there are better ways of being.

“My people will sleep for 100 years and when they awake it will be the artists that will give them back their spirit.” Metis leader Louis Riel, before he was murdered.

All Pages – Content Banners – Top and Bottom

About The Author

Zainab Amadahy

Zainab Amadahy is of mixed race background that includes African American, Cherokee, Seminole, Portuguese, Amish, Pacific Islander and other trace elements (if DNA testing is accurate). She is an author of screenplays, nonfiction and futurist fiction, the most notable being the adequately written yet somehow cult classic “Moons of Palmares”. Based in peri-apocalyptic Toronto, Zainab is the mother of 3 grown sons and a cat who allows her to sit on one section of the couch. For more on Zainab and free access to some of her writings check out her website. www.swallowsongs.com.

Related posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.