Excerpts from a topic group led by Patxi Xabier Odriozola, the International Commonality Reference Person for Languages and Interpreting, at the “Mental Health” Liberation Leaders’ Conference in Pennsylvania, USA, October 2019
I will share some information with you, and what I want is for you to taste it in your session and bring back your thinking.
LANGUAGE OPPRESSION AND “NORMALITY”
We all know what “normal” is. It’s that tiny, reduced, stupid finite box that the system says is the only space we can live and think in. It’s reinforced by “mental health” oppression.
Let’s see how language oppression works on that little box of “normality.” What is “normal” for language? “Normal” is that everybody speaks English. If you’re avoiding using your own language, you may be collaborating with “normal.” If you are hiding your heritage, language, culture, or accent, you could be working for the box and making it bigger and stronger in you and your relationships.
BEING AWARE WHEN SPEAKING A DOMINANT LANGUAGE
When you are speaking in a dominant language, it can be easy to produce dominant relationships without noticing it. This doesn’t mean that everyone who speaks dominant languages is dominating personally, but oppressive messages can go out if you are not aware of what and how you are speaking.
When you talk in a dominant language, like English, there can be an oppressive tsunami behind you waiting to be activated. It can make people go into the inferiority role or join you in the superiority role. Whether or not it is activated and affects the people you are talking to depends on you.
It’s up to you [it depends on you] how to use the language in an elegant, non-oppressive way. We know that our intelligence is much bigger than any complication of the world, that it is possible to have solutions for everything. So you can change an oppressive language situation into a liberating language situation. If you are aware of the situation, you can do it. And remember, there is no such thing as an oppressor language. Only the way a language is used can be oppressive.
DISCHARGING ON YOUR LANGUAGE-OPPRESSION HISTORY
“Mental health” oppression stops us from crying and raging. It can stop us from discharging about the loss of a native language. If you lost an old native language and you cry about that, people might use oppressive expressions like, “Why are you crying for something you lost two generations ago? Don’t waste time on useless things.” “Are you okay?” “Please, cry for important things! You’re crazy!”
But you are not wasting time. You are investing time. If you discharge about the loss, you will reconnect with what was there before it.
Here is a possible direction for your next sessions: “I belonged to someone and to somewhere that now I do not remember, because oppression doesn’t want me to remember who I really am. I belong to a group of smart, free, good people who had a smart, free, intelligent, complete, natural, brilliant language . . . ,“ or “I belong to a place . . . .”
Whenever we discharge, information that’s been waiting for us to re-evaluate will come to us and guide us around the world in a different way. When you discharge about a lost language, it will be easier to recognize which part of the world you belong to. Things will start to inform you about something that’s been closed and shut down all your life.
Suddenly one word of your original language will come out from your mouth, and something new will happen. You will be able to talk more easily about your history, your family’s history, your people, and things will change in a place where you have never seen a change.
Perhaps our mission is not to get the lost languages back but to bring back memories of who we were and introduce that to people: “Hey, these are my ancestors, and these were their languages.”
It’s not going to be fast or finished in ten years. Ten thousand years of oppression are not going to disappear in ten sessions.