Beth: This is a conversation between Beth and Rebecca on November 19th, 2024 about Chapter 18 in Colorizing Restorative Justice.
Rebecca: And we just acknowledged that the land we’re on is stolen land, and it’s the ancestral land of the Massachusett and Pawtucket people. So, where do you want to start?
Beth: I think starting with ourselves. What’s your first sense of, when you read that; what was the first thing you thought of?
Rebecca: When I was thinking about these internalized settler structures, I guess I was thinking about the way the author talks about the sort of fantasy, the story that’s told even if there’s a nod towards And for 10,000 years indigenous people lived here, and then We came, or then These People came, and that’s what really mattered. Everything before was sort of like a precursor, they were waiting. In this story it’s And then colonizers came and improved the land and so for me, equating labor with ownership is probably a pretty tricky thing for me to think about…like, I love working in my garden! I feel a connection to that soil. I feel like it’s my soil, because I composted the things, and put it in there and I put all my hard work into that soil. So I’ve been told, as I’ve lived in this world, that I’m making my yard beautiful, and so it’s mine. And then to have to face the fact that it’s not mine! But to realize that I might need to shift that and just be like I am stewarding this land for now. But that I’m not willing to go much further than that is something I have to think hard about, so I think that’s where it came for me. And I knew the [concept of] “labor”-- “improving the land” was a thing; I learned about that, but applying it to myself–that’s what came to me.
Beth: I think what I kept coming back to was, you know, this fantasy. As a child, my understanding of what was here before Europeans was that there were a few people living on this vast expanse of land and they were so generous to offer to help the Pilgrims and make it possible [for them] to live. And then, it was powerful racism of the games of Cowboys and Indians. But even then, those memories–my visceral memory of those fantasies–was that it was just a handful of indigenous people; it wasn’t a whole continent peopled with millions of people and cultures and civilizations that had been here for tens of thousands, or more, years; and that that was the fantasy I grew up with. And it wasn’t until I was an adult studying to be a teacher that I really began to know the true history.
Rebecca: Right. And you had to seek it out too, in some ways, right? Or did they–in your education did they include this piece for you, or did you have to seek it out?
Beth: Well, in some ways, I was really lucky, because I was working at a school, a private school, that benefitted from settler structures and congratulated itself for being so progressive where we did talk about true history, right? So that’s another thing I struggle with is that in our progressive spaces where we talk about Howard Zinn and what the true history of the United States is, that in some ways we’re just content to know it but not do anything with that knowledge. And I think it was once I went to college and started working in more progressive schools where we were very proud of ourselves for knowing the truth, but not really taking any action regarding that truth.
Rebecca: Yeah, I have on page 327, I have a sticky note that has a big star and it says Powerful Hypocrisy… “Settler colonialism’s literature provides disturbing insights as to why RJ sidesteps this harm- the First Harm in particular. Most notably, RJ counts settlers among its numbers, some of whom are considered its leaders, yet almost all Whites neither think of, nor see themselves as settlers on a daily basis. Whites attending a 2008 restorative practices conference, for example, were unsettled when I used the term “settler” to describe them and discussed what their settler identities mean for my people. My allies who attended breakout sessions or talked with the attendees of this conference related to me that White men were angry and White women cried. Their anger indicates to me that even fewer Whites in RJ comprehend what settler identity means for indigenous peoples, not only in the past, but now, and going into the future.” I took my walk in the woods this morning and I had the book with me and I was just really, just trying to keep a clear head, but you know thoughts come in and I had to let them happen. And one of the things I was thinking about was [our] land acknowledgment and how I’ve noticed, Beth, that you have been using the words “First Harm” in our–when you do the acknowledgment–but I don’t remember you doing that two years ago. And when you use the words the First Harm, I’ve seen a lot of people be like, just nodding their heads yes, and I didn’t note everybody’s reaction. But that’s probably a fairly brave–like a fairly rare thing for RJ practitioners to do, maybe. I don’t know…I haven’t been to conferences and seen how other White middle-class women or men, or whomever, what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. I really think the way you talk about leading up to the First Harm is really lovely. Because you go back to ancestry and everyone’s– before we lived in big huge civilizations, we lived in small communities and this is what we needed as human beings. And then we come to the First Harm. In the land acknowledgment we talk a lot about the systems and the structures that we borrowed from, in our teaching, which I think is really important. But I also think the descendants of these people are here and they’re living here and we are living on their land! And just thinking about bringing it into today. That’s just one of the things I was thinking about, and being brave enough to say that, in a way that won’t lose us the attention and goodwill of the people we’re trying to help.
Beth: Right. And the will of the people who are struggling with their White fragility.
Rebecca: Right! And we need to get paid because we live in a system of capitalism where you and I need to make money and have people want to hire us.
Beth: As I was reading this chapter, I was thinking, does mentioning the Hollow Water First Nation and the Dahka T’lingit and the [Carcross-]Tagish people, do we say that as if we’re saying we get an absolution because we were taught this by these peoples? That’s not enough. And we have an understanding that these group[s] of people brought the practices into the White colonial system because the system was failing their children, right? So that’s why it came. It wasn’t like Oh, here’s a gift–another gift for you. No! It was like Our children are failing in this system, and so we need to do something to help our children, and here are practices that our people used, right, so we’re still appropriating it. It wasn’t a gift. It was a way to say we need to take care of our children.
And as White settlers, we’re like, Oh! We should try this with our privileged children, and in the process, have made that inaccessible to indigenous African* children, and indigenous North American children. So that has been appropriated and then, what was meant to serve and support marginalized children is now not supporting or serving them in that way that it was intended. And to me, that’s, like, this land acknowledgment feels like we’re giving ourselves absolution. And who benefits in our White schools from our restorative practices? Are black and brown children benefiting from these practices? I think that oftentimes they’re not. I mean, I guess in some ways some of my thinking is shifting. We need to help ourselves. We need to help our White children decolonize themselves, right? So it’s not my job to go in and to determine what the Black students in schools need. They know what they need. The work we need to do as settlers is to work with our own people right? That keeps being said. But at the same time, I think this is always the challenge I’ve found in any of this social justice, racial justice, restorative justice work, is: How do I stay in my own lane, work with my own people, center the voice of the marginalized…and I don’t.. it’s not that I don’t want to do it. It’s that I don’t–it’s like, I don’t know how to do it! And I know it’s through relationship, right? I know it’s being in relationship, and I know I need to have more courage to say, I’m gonna try and then hear when people say, mmmm, nah, you didn’t hit the mark. And that’s real, and that–I’m, like, I guess that’s White fragility right? Like, that’s White fragility, I don’t want to be seen as a bad person.
Rebecca: Yeah. But there’s also this, you know, they spend a lot of time in this chapter talking about how we as White people have been conditioned our entire lives. You talked about your early memories of playing Cowboys and Indians, and the story of the first Thanksgiving–which still gets told all the time.
Beth: All the time.
Rebecca: All the time! And the system doesn’t benefit from us rejecting it, right? So the system gets harmed if we reject it, and so there’s so many things in place to make us feel unsettled, uncomfortable, like a fraud, because we’re rejecting everything we’ve been told that we are.
Beth: I did read in here I didn’t mark it, I’m sure I underlined it, but it was about how land can’t be returned, reparations can’t be made, until we as a society can acknowledge that the harm even occurred.
Rebecca: Yeah, I marked the same page and I was like I said “Seek out those who are willing to talk,” and then I wrote, “No answers” (laughs). So is that something that we do is we, is we listen?
Beth: We engage in the conversation.
Rebecca: We engage in the conversation! And there are places, these people wrote a whole book about it!
Beth: Right, well, and I was thinking about, I guess I’m curious to go back to–when we started talking about our internal settlers. I feel like we talked a little about it historically, where it came from. But how is it–and you talked a little bit about the land and feeling connected to the land. And this shift from owning the land to stewarding the land. Where else do these structures…
Rebecca: Impact us daily? Or benefit us?
Beth: Or benefit, or live in us? Thinking about shared resources, like the fact that there are people in our community who don’t have enough food in a place where food is thrown away daily. That is in place, right, because if people are hungry, and are struggling, how can they gain any purchase within the society? How do you gain power? And that that food is wielded! That food isn’t a right. That healthcare isn’t a right, that clean water isn’t a right. I just paid my water bill! $2,000 a year for clean water. Right, like, that disconnect from the Earth belonging to everybody and being a resource for everybody, and how powerfully interconnected we are. And that I have the means to purchase clean water. And there are other people who don’t. Who literally don’t.
Rebecca: I think part of it–I think a lot of the thinking about the settler structures, and yeah, the disconnection from the Earth, is the idea that there is this individualism, right? So, the American Individualist, and each person on their own can achieve all of these things. And that’s a pretty powerful lie. I mean that’s an incredibly–that’s the story we tell ourselves, is that individually we can be like Elon Musk and be a billionaire, right? (Beth laughs), and that’s the goal. That’s the thing we’re told is our goal.
Beth: (softly) We’re supposed to be Elon Musk.
Rebecca: I have bucked against that my whole life. And I didn’t ever have the words or the skills to think about it until I forced myself to start thinking about it. And I think about, like, the things that have drawn me towards this work or other vol–I’ve always done a lot of volunteer work–and you know I’m a TREE person, like I look at the one person in front of me, which is interesting, now that I’m working my way through this. But also I do see us all as deeply, profoundly interconnected! And my work with the Food Drive, right, like, taking food that Whole Foods is going to throw in a dumpster, and delivering it to someone in my community. And all of those things run on systems, and I have to play the game the way it is. And then my work with you, how I met you through White People Challenging Racism, pushing out of the comfort zone. Bucking against those systems, and until recently, I didn’t know why I was doing that, or how to do it, but I think the longer you sit with it and say, you know, this is really uncomfortable, I don’t know what am I going to do to face it. I think that’s part of the path forward: is to say, this is deeply unsettling and I don’t know what I’m gonna do but I’m gonna try something. It might not work, but I’ll listen, and I’ll try again.
Beth: When you just said you’re such a TREE person and I’m such a FOREST person– that my activism I feel like, has always been, like “I have to like, do something to change the world!” It’s more broad…so it’s been volunteering to do White People Challenging Racism, or fighting at my church to finally get them to say that–not that I believe Black Lives Matter signs change anything–but, you have to have a conversation as an organization to decide if you’re going to put it up. And so, pushing for that sign… And so, I think I’ve always thought more systemically, and tried to do this work that’s, like, big and broad. And maybe that’s what makes us a really good team, right? You’re the TREE person, I’m the FOREST person, and somewhere we find our way to do our little bit.
Rebecca: Yeah!
Beth: But I do think for me it’s always been about–ever since I was little, it’s been about–truth, like that’s not true. That’s not true. I’ve always felt a deep, visceral ache, stomachache, heartache when the truth hasn’t been told. So my mission I think as a teacher, as a Restorative Justice practitioner, is telling the truth. How do we tell the truth about what is the true story, that Talk? And I don’t know that I always have the courage to do it in the way that it needs to be done. I think I've whitewashed some of my conversations. And I don’t know if it was lack of courage or fear, not fear of being rejected but fear of people not being willing to be in the conversation. Or driving people away from the conversation. How do you find that balance of keeping people engaged, and on the edge of their comfort zones so that they can keep doing the work? How do we work towards coexistence?
Rebecca: Yeah. Because he said, “We’re willing to do that.”
Beth: We don’t have to leave.
Rebecca: He did say that. What page is that?
Beth: It’s on 364, it’s like, how might it move settlers toward undoing the First Harm, and working toward coexistence as people?
Rebecca: But how can we not succumb to hopelessness? And “I can’t do anything, so why try?” That’s them winning, right? That’s the whole thing, that’s it all winning over us. So I think just as maintaining colonialism and the settler identity is vital to those systems, I think if you’re trying to break those systems down, you have to know that’s going to be a constant battle. That’s going to be a choice: “Every moment we have a moment by moment opportunity” to make certain decisions. And what if we center the First Harm in our decisions? And we may make a decision that doesn’t directly work to undo the harm, but we acknowledge that, we think about it, and why did we make that other decision? And sitting with that, and thinking of that. And knowing that this is work that lots of people have to do, and it’s going to take a long time doing it. If we don’t do it then we’re not contributing to the dismantling. So it’s like, it has to be The Work.
Beth: In here, it talked about how of the people that are today, indigenous are 1%. Prior to 1492 it was 100%. Essentially, that’s genocide. So, they now have 2% of the land. Prior to 1492 they had 100% of the land. Pass the talking piece. Here’s the soil. What do we do about being settlers on that land?
Thank you so much for listening to our conversation. If you are a White person doing restorative justice work, we encourage you to read this chapter, chapter 18 in Colorizing Restorative Justice, which is written by Edward C. Valandra, who also edited the book as a whole. We encourage you to read with a partner or a colleague and have your own conversation. Or/and, reach out to us if you want to connect about this conversation. And if you live in Massachusetts, go to the Mass Center for Native American Awareness, which is mcnaa.org; and there you can learn more about the indigenous people who live in Massachusetts, and you can support their work. There’s lots of information there. If you live outside of Massachusetts, we encourage you to seek out those organizations that are supporting Native American awareness in your community.
Beth and Rebecca: Thanks! Bye!
*The term Indigenous Africans refers to enslaved people who were taken from their homelands in Africa to North America. Valandra references indigenous Africans in this chapter.