From the disconnection to the reconnection to Earth

 

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Because we are organic beings, the sum of seeds and plantings;

 

Because we need to reconnect and reconcile ourselves with Nature and to renew our eternal relationship with Earth, the source of Life;

 

Because we want to be guardians of this nourishing Earth;

 

Because only one occasion has been granted us to rethink our rapport with the Earth by weaving new connections on the road towards otherness;

 

Because we need to relearn, individually and collectively, how to listen, how to teach ourselves and immerse ourselves in the laws of Nature;

 

Because we cannot continue nourishing our bodies and spirits with this ancestral Earth without, in turn, offering nourishment to her.

 

Because there has been exploitation, despoliation, pillage, mutilation, dispossession, deforestation, contamination, pollution and disfiguration of the Earth, so now we must be ever watchful, more today than yesterday, without forgetting tomorrow and with an eye towards the regeneration of the source of Life.

 

 

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From monologue to dialogue

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Because there is an insidious standing invitation to forgetfulness, erasure and collective amnesia;

 

Because language, dance, song, stories, family histories, ceremonies, rituals, great oral traditions, mythological and animistic thought, Indigenous ethics and aesthetics constitute an underestimated ancestral heritage;

 

Because the spirituality and the protective nature of the Elders have an inestimable and immeasurable wisdom;

 

Because these legacies are landmarks on our trajectory along the road to knowledge of our humanity, of the world, the other and ourselves;

 

Because we want to escape cultural monologue so as to move towards a dialogue between traditions, memories and cultural creativity;

 

Because we take nostalgic refuge in the self-conservation ;

 

Because our endogenous references are many, varied and in perpetual motion;

 

Because we do not self-identify with a single definition and unilateral notion of identity;

 

Because self-definition must again become imaginable, feasible and realizable;

 

Because we do not want to appropriate the memory of a living culture, but instead know and understand it with respect;

 

Because neither do we want to open any further the wound still healing, nor camouflage the indelible scars of the body or spirit.

 

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From difference to reciprocity

 

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Because the Last People (those who have immigrated or are exiled, and their children) want to join with the First People;

 

Because in the past movement has been necessary and the capacity for mobility has become a reflex;

 

Because we are both faraway and near-by entities, born of history, with several bases on commonality;

 

Because we are and have been victims of yesterday’s oppression and today’s stereotypes;

 

Because we suffer from a watered-down, homogeneous vision, at times racist and reductive;

 

Because we have also been classified and categorized under deterministic, stigmatic names;

 

Because we feel at times enclosed, not imprisoned, in a box that has been imposed upon us without consent;

 

Because despite our sedentary habit, we function, consciously and unconsciously, with the spirit of the nomad to avoid rigidity in our thinking;

 

Because we do not want to self-indigenize, but rather draw from the book of respect for an ancestral culture, rooted in peace, which is grounded;

 

Because finally, our revolt, our anger, our cries, our indignities connect fully with yours!

From colonial and pyramidal thinking to a circular and organic thinking

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Because we would like to enter in the great circle of Nature, neither ahead of or behind other beings;

 

Because it is in this circle that an authentic encounter is inevitably born and that solidarity between beings, taking into account individual and collective subjectivities;

 

Because we remain convinced that freedom of movement is easier inside this circle, rather than under the dictate of excessive and obsessive individualism and anonymity;

 

Because we do not want to repeat a vertical, pyramidal, hierarchical structure;

 

Because we do not need a guide, nor a master, nor a spokesperson;

 

Because the word emanating from the summit of the elitist political class of this centralized hierarchy has never really been audible at the level of the social bases;

 

Because we do not want to be complicit with the masters and possessor of Nature, nor slaves of a system of competition and of mechanical accumulation;

 

Because we do not want to be in a state of judgement, but rather a state of observation, instinct and empathy;

 

Because we are awakening from a collective slumber and becoming conscious that we are only renters on this planet and it does not belong to us;

 

Because we must also accept that we can be at times both powerless and ignorant;

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Because we cannot continue to adhere to the contract of passivity in the face of this social and environmental crisis;

 

Because we have a shared, non-negotiable responsibility towards Earth and the generation yet to come;

 

Because we must plant more seeds, to cultivate our crops without forgetting to be careful during times of existential frustrations and divergences of opinion;

 

Because we cannot repeat a silent revolution without making noise that will delegitimize the use of force and all forms of abuse of power;

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Because the faces of our world come in all colours; we are diverse, plural and cosmopolitan with multiple, fluid and singular identities that are neither fixed nor frozen;

 

Because we do not want to be taken hostage in the tensions and ruptures of identity that separate us from one another, but rather exist in the quiet harmony of our individual and collective memories, and our common origins;

 

Because there is no more space for the boarding schools of single-mindedness;

 

Because we are neither of the « souche » nor the « pures laines »;

 

Because we have accents and dark skin tones;

 

Because go back to your own country is no longer a possible destination; our country is HERE, in this borderless world;

 

Because only with the eighth fire, we will not allow the coals to consume our integrity nor our humanity;

 

Because the flame carried by the Indigenous people, alongside the non-Indigenous, is inextinguishable;

I... We dedicate these words to those who fear the dictatorship of minorities and the defence of unreliable memories...

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By Hanieh Ziaei