Ancestral Commons as a Decolonial Practice

• In Event: Preservation, Decolonization, and Knowledge Passing Over Time

Abstract

As environmental history conference goers well know, land and race are inextricably entwined. Through slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation--among other legal and cultural practices--global capitalist and power regimens have continued to extract wealth, labor, and land from US Black folks. In light of this long history of disenfranchisement, many Black justice and farming activists have developed what I’m calling an “ancestral commons” that helps guide their fight for justice and offers a positive vision for the future of Black farming. This paper examines the ancestral commons in in two Black activists’ work: Leah Penniman’s Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land and food justice activist Karen Washington’s videos and talks. Both activists center Black agrarian and traditional African and indigenous farming practices and historical figures like George Washington Carver, Booker T. Whatley, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Black Panthers in their social justice appeals; it is this accretion of references and rhetoric that create an ancestral commons. Through this use of a commons, these activists develop narratives that not only recognize but also offer a means to heal the trauma associated with the land for US Black folks by connecting an ecological understanding of land to a much older and longer-lived ancestral relationship.

Author

• Valerie Padilla Carroll, Kansas State University