Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

by Patty Krawec

Levins Morales also writes about these legacies we inherit. In her essay “Raícism: Rootedness as Spiritual and Political Practice,” she writes about acknowledging our ancestors’ positions of power and then choosing to balance the books on their behalf as well as our own. We all, Black and Indigenous, settler and migrant, have at least one axis of power, and so while we gravitate toward those stories of being oppressed, it is important to acknowledge these other stories, particularly if those other stories make up most of your history. “Deciding that we are in fact accountable frees us to act. Acknowledging our ancestors’ participation in the oppression of others (and this is true of everyone), and deciding to balance the accounts on their behalf and our own, leads to less shame and more integrity, less self-righteousness and more righteousness, more humility and compassion and sense of proportion.”