This online article about the Taino cultural identity as separate from Hispanic or Latino captured my attention today.
My first thought was to wonder why it’s so important to keep separating our selves by tribal affiliation but then I tapped into an awareness. A child who doesn’t develop a strong sense of self cannot hope to function as a contributing member of a whole. Colonial domination functions much like an abusive parent who destroys a child’s sense of self. We must allow strong national identities to reform if we want a communal culture that functions as an integrated and diverse whole. Just as we need to allow strong children to grow up knowing and being themselves in our families.
Seems an awareness that is very alive in the zeitgeist right now, given the Canadian truth and reconciliation commission’s final report today.
A wish for all people to be free to know themselves and to be themselves, fully, wholly. To contribute to one another from our strengths as individuals. And for us all to move together into more.
May the spiral of human consciousness continue its ever expanding quest.
