The Reclamation Movement and Modernity’s Ritual
The Reclamation Movement is upon us — of reclaiming what 93.8% of humans have been detached from for far too long, and across far too many generations.
Bonnie Greer OBE is a playwright, critic and former British Museum Trustee who, together with the museum’s former director, Hartwig Fischer, has coined the term, The Era of Reclamation*. This 21st-century reckoning is what we may all be feeling or sensing right now with even more intensity. In this era of reclaiming there is a focused attention on recovery, restoration, and reconnection.
But right now you may be wondering — recovery of what?
WHAT
Every inhabitable continent has a story of its peoples having their individual and collective identity taken or threatened. Of a planet that was once 100% indigenous, there now exists 6.2% indigenous humans across 90 countries and 5,000 distinct groups. This indigenous identity is not the socially constructed identity of Asianness, Blackness, Latinidad, or Whiteness. It is not colonizer or the colonized. It is that part of your lineage that is much deeper — wiser.
To explain, I’ve whipped up a quick map that tracks indigenous population elimination across each continent. It’s not comprehensive, but it instills in you the big picture, very quickly.
[Image ALT Text] Europe: Roman expansion 500 BCE; Forced Christianization 800 CE and 1147 CE continued systematic elimination of indigenous Europeans by Europeans. Asia: Early conquests 500 BCE. Mongol expansion 1300s (40Mln indigenous deaths). Starting in 700 CE, Islamic conquests. 1600s European colonization. Japanese imperial expansion 1895, with 3-14Mln deaths. Australia: British colonization 1788 CE, - a loss of +95% Aboriginal population. 1900s forced removal of children. Africa: Pre-colonial Arab slave trade 700 CE, and Trans-Atlantic Slave trade 1500 CE and European colonization 1900 CE. South America: Spanish and Portuguese conquest in 1492. +96.5% indigenous population eliminated. 1600s exploitation of rubber. 1800s Amazon deforestation and land dispossession. North America: Initial contact and spread of disease 1492. Systematic and biological warfare 1600s. U.S. expansion period 1776, genocide, buffalo extinction. A +95% indigenous population elimination.
These identities were lost. The empowering stories, the courageous ways they kept each other in check yet lived in harmony, the daily rituals that kept their minds at peace, their capacity to be in the unknown, the botanical knowledge and care that helped the natural world thrive, the quirks that uniquely made them so precious to this Earth, and the practices that gave them and their dear ones dignity. This (and more) is what was removed, and relegated to some distant and forgotten realm of the collective psyche. This (and more) is what is in wait to be recovered.
In the story of conqueror and conquered, it may seem that those conquered had nothing worth cherishing, or valuing. It may seem that the survival of the fittest ideology of Darwin is wholly accurate. Survival of the fittest has meant becoming a networked monolith. It has meant assimilation, subordination, religious ecocide, and genocide. In the realm of the doubly wise, this is a grave fallacy that has crafted our current Central Civilization.
From The Long Now, James Anderson writes, “Over millennia, the network that formed at the intersection of Asia and Africa came to encompass networks to the west in Europe, the Americas, the western part of the African continent and in south and east Asia, placing it, in certain respects, at the center of the world stage.”
Humanity conquered itself into a monolith. While it has resulted in wonderful technology, there has been a cost. We are well accustomed to greed, and now there are so many humans who are starving for the wisdom and power that their ancients knew. From the other side of reality, I sense that our past is knocking at the door of our collective basement, pleading to be released from its exile — our ancestors’ wisdom crying out to nurse our hunger, to fill us for the sake of us, our beloveds, and this precious Earth. The past unnerves us, letting us know that what has been lost is not gone.
But we’ll have to journey deeply. We can’t rely on the ingrained institutional tendencies that present history in a less confrontational way. We have to acknowledge shortcomings, errors, violence and victimization — if we are to ever reclaim our true power.
It is our duty, as the living, to restore the connection by taking on the journey to greet our wise ones — dig into our interior selves, and dig into the past. And where possible and where appropriate, lean on the wisdom of the 6.2% indigenous population — the precious, living treasures who have preserved ways of being and doing that may help us in this era.
HOW
Over a decade ago I unconsciously fled to Asia, seeking out peace and happiness there because I was unaware of the deeper calling. In my pursuit, I made one of the greatest errors of my life. It took another decade of learning, studying, training, and fleeing into the outskirts of the Amazon jungle, into the arms of the indigenous, for the deep healing and restoration that their preserved cultures were able to provide, righting me onto the path of restoration.
In 2020 I read the book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta. His work beautifully highlights what our planet’s eldest peoples know. I’m not mentioning his work or any indigenous way to idolize the past or the ancients — if we are deeply honest with ourselves, we know that there are errors in some of their past ways. But I do want to emphasize that those who survived through the violence, those who are alive today, have preserved wisdom and knowledge that can help reorient us in what feels like a cold, lonely abyss.
Modernity offers so much that we can each benefit from, but the systems and mechanisms that have been crafted are lopsided and imbalanced. There is a machine-like approach to daily life and the heart of what makes us human is the sacrifice towards the callous gods of these times.
Be less human, be less humane, become more mechanistic — this has become the ritual of modernity — and it’s taking us further from where we collectively want to be.
The Reclamation Movement is a call to tend to your total self by reclaiming your ancestral wisdom (and beyond). It is not set inside the symbols of a flag or statue, or resting in the social constructs of your modern identity. It’s much deeper than that, older than that. It’s the core of your personal identity as a human, the whole lineage you are part of — not the shortcomings of our most recent folk, but the glory of who they were in antiquity.
This movement is asking us to rediscover that deep knowing of who you belong to, and the gifts your ancients bring to this Earth.
What about you? How will you reclaim your true power in The Era of Reclamation?
A part of me wonders what the world might look like once we’re comfortable and confident about who we are. Once we sit inside our identities that aren’t marred by manipulation. Identities that are empowering — so much so that we do not have the need to sacrifice our human hearts to the boring, lifeless gods of modernity.
For Greer, she uses the power of the museums to reclaim and reconnect to the oldest parts of herself. She visits them with the intention to locate the objects and displays that enable her to feel into who she is.
For me, as a Black woman, my particular journey of reclamation has been one hell of a ride, honey. From the Bible Belt to Asia to financial abuse to freedom to the outskirts of the Amazon all the way home.
And so, I’d love to help you navigate your way there too, without the drama.
More soon!
*For a deeper dive on the Era of Reclamation through the lens of Black history, visit here.