Freedom, Justice, and InTERdependence
On July 4th 2022, having received a series of recent Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) decisions, my mind goes to the topics of freedom, justice, and inTERdependence. And with that trio, my heart knits together the stories of Black people and Indigenous people of this country named the United States of America which is behaving more like the divided states of North America.
One story is that of Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West, a play telling the story of four Black women who purchased land through the Homestead Act of 1862 and settled in Nicodemus, Kansas. Nicodemus is the sole remaining of several all-Black townships, which became home to formerly enslaved African Americans. These “Exodusters” left the south traveling west with the 1865 passage of the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery and formalized the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Flyin’ West illuminates numerous social ills the women faced as well as the ability for them to withstand them through the fortitude of the bonds the women sustain.
Another story involves the 20 leaders from Savannah’s Black churches who met with General William T. Sherman to create Special Field Order #15. Those clergymen, including Garrison Frazier, Ullyses L Houston, and William Campbell to name a few, said that land is power and reserved coastal lands from Charleston, South Carolina to Florida’s St. John ‘s River for ownership of freed families on 40 acre tracts. Andrew Johnson, who assumed the presidency upon Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, rescinded Special Field Order #15 and returned the land to former owners, many of whom had born arms against the U.S. government. To this day Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society struggles to protect the land and the people of one Georgia sea island in that area.
A third story is that of Green Street Friends (Quaker) Meeting’s reparations commitment. Led by its Black members, the faith community committed to a decade of reparations work in its Germantown Philadelphia neighborhood. Its first project has had 15 members engaging in intake interviews for Black Germantown homeowners who require legal assistance for deeds or wills to obtain and retain home ownership. Family homes, for which prior and current generations worked hard, are at risk due to gentrification and other issues. Yet, the small Black-led group, in partnership with Philadelphia VIP, Community Legal Services, and pro bono attorneys are responding to more than 80 neighbors in 6 months.
Everyone of these stories features degrees of freedom, justice, and interdependence. Of course, there are more stories even as everyone of these three leave untold the story of the Indigenous people of these lands.
In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer invites us to not dominate land but become one with it and our “non-human relations”; to practice reciprocity and community; to honor gifts, gratitude, and or responsibilities; and to fulfill a future that builds on the best of the past and present as we restore that which has been harmed. She writes,
“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don’t have to avert our eye with shame, so that we hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgment of the rest of earth’s beings.”
For me, the people who do that best are deeply grounded in activism and in touch with something greater whatever you call that. Both wings are flying and their freedom and liberty is in service to and flows from inTERdependence. That adept flying is crucially needed with SCOTUS decisions that remand sovereignty of Oklahoma Native lands and governance of non-Natives on those lands; reassert that handgun bans are illegal; strip the EPA of authority to regulate (and may set precedent for other federal agencies to be deauthorized); weaken Miranda rights; uphold racial gerrymandering; make school prayer legal; and remove the right to an abortion for women in some states.
Spiritual changemakers, we need so much from you now! Let’s be smart and work inTERdependently, seeking guidance from those who are most adversely impacted. And, if that feels hard, here’s a resource. Or let’s talk.
