The First RC Workshop
for European Native People
The first RC workshop for European Native people, led by Marcie Rendon (the International Liberation Reference Person for Native Americans), took place near Bilbao in the Basque country (Euskal Herria) in August 2019. Many thanks to the Basque people for hosting. Seeing them in their habitat, with pride in their country, was uplifting and hopeful.
What follows is some of what happened at the workshop, and some of my own thinking.
Interpreters were available for everyone who didn’t understand English, and the interpreting often took a long time—because some of the subjects were challenging, as they weren’t ones that are often talked about. That made it necessary for Marcie to speak even more directly and clearly, which to me was a great benefit.
Marcie outlined the situation for Indigenous people and said that it wouldn’t work to claim Indigenous heritage to avoid working on being white. All identities need to be worked on. “Name it, claim it, discard it!” is the RC approach to every identity, and we need systematic discharge, probably for at least a year, on each of those steps.
WORKING ON THE OPPRESSOR ROLE
Marcie repeated many times, “We all have to work on the oppressor side of the distresses.” Having been oppressed makes us vulnerable to flipping into the oppressor role, and “we all become oppressors at some point.” As RCers, because we know that people have to be oppressed before becoming oppressors, we too often focus on the victim role.
I (Frank) think we need firm counseling to reverse the decision to act as oppressors. We need to discharge grief about the disconnection that has pulled us to pass on the hurt. We need firm counseling to face it, to not avoid it. I find it challenging to put my mind there. It is tempting to keep looking at the victim side. But in the end, it’s been I who’s decided to pass on the hurt. For me it works to decide not to do that. That is where my power lies.
RACISM AND GENOCIDE
Marcie explained the difference between racism and genocide. (Many people are targeted by both.)
Racism is used to exploit people’s labor, with skin color as the excuse. It hurts people badly and often shortens their lives.
Genocide is the stealing of people’s lands and resources by making the people “disappear”—not only by killing them but also by taking their children, erasing their culture, forbidding them to speak their languages, forcing them to convert to the oppressor’s religion (Christianity in Europe), and not allowing them to govern themselves.
As I (Frank) have understood it, recordings from genocide can include thinking about suicide, putting one’s life at risk, worrying about others dying, wanting to kill, carelessness, not taking care of oneself, exhaustion, shame, anger, violence, self-mutilation, abandonment, staying out of sight, going quiet, feeling disconnected, not being able to hold on to relationships, destroying the people one loves, addictions.
I’ve thought about how European children have been sent to boarding schools and seminaries (to become priests) and how the institutionalized brutalization there could have played a part in the passing on of genocide distress.
RECLAIMING OUR HERITAGES
We had a lot of time at the workshop to ask questions, such as, “What do we do with white people?” “Can we help white people?” “What does it mean that we are both white and Indigenous?” “When is someone Indigenous and when not?” “What about the racism in Europe of the Northern people toward the Southern people?” Marcie was precise in her answers and gave many examples. Between all the answers and stories, it became clear to me that we need to reclaim our own heritages. We cannot replace the work we need to do on our own history and recordings with answers from other Indigenous peoples whose cultures have been more preserved.
Christianization erased or altered the Native European values and spirituality, including the rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations. And the institutionalization of “problematic” people separated the Native peoples from their elders and healers. These things led to the adoption of white norms and values and the colonization of the Native people’s minds. We have to discharge how our minds have been colonized, including by values that have led to the climate crisis.
The people I (Frank) grew up with hoped to give me a better future by passing on Dutch national oppression, which prepared me for further assimilation into being Dutch. My people’s survival has depended on assimilation. I can be proud of their skill in adapting quickly to new situations. Brabant [a region in the Netherlands and Belgium] has had many occupiers in the last two thousand years.
Assimilation is at the core of my distresses. I have struggled to speak when I’m around authorities, or middle-class or Dutch people. And I still struggle to speak my first language when (middle-class) Dutch people are around. (My first language is Noord-Brabants, which has at least ninety-four variations. It is poorly documented, but we still have writers and poets.)
Sometimes the internalized pressure to assimilate makes me behave awkwardly and I become blunt or adversarial. I could get stuck in blaming the Dutch, but it is my challenge to discharge the internalized oppression. My power lies in re-evaluating the distress—even when present-time issues also need to be addressed.
APPROPRIATION
Appropriation involves the taking of another people’s culture and spirituality. It played a big role in the history of Europe. The Romans made it one of their policies. When the Romans conquered Europe, they not only took the land and the people, they also took the people’s gods, spirits, and ceremonies.
When the Europeans colonized other parts of the world, they took spices, foods, clothing, art, music, and words—along with all the gold, silver, oil, and other valuable resources they stole—from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia and blended them into the European world. Then the Europeans forgot their own culture and believed that the stolen culture was their own. It became hard for them to access their original identities.
In some Western countries, appropriation has become a part of white middle-class culture. In the 1960s large numbers of white middle-class Europeans went to India to recover some spirituality and came back with mystic ideas that seemed to fill a frozen need for connection and meaning. But mysticism is not going to replace our need for connection with our own people. We cannot appropriate another people’s spirituality to make up for the losses we have suffered.
Marcie encouraged us to figure things out instead of copying things from other cultures.
KINDNESS
Marcie “advised” us to be kind. Genocide and the colonization of our minds with whiteness have left us with recordings of harshness and defensiveness. Deciding to be kind is a good direction against these recordings.
There was much more at this workshop than I (Frank) have reported and reflected on, and so much that we didn’t have time to do. This will mean doing lots of research and having many sessions. And part of our liberation is to open up the work to many more Europeans, starting on our own street.
[A Basque version of this article, translated by Juan Gabriel Urriategi, is on the following two pages.]
Nieuwegein, the Netherlands
(Present Time 198, January 2020)