Rematriation: Defining an Afrikan-Centered Reparatory Justice Response to the Epistemic Violence of Afrikan Enslavement by Dr. Nicola Frith
Dr. Joyce Hope Scott
&
Ms. Esther Stanford-Xosei
from the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) 11
At this moment in time, many are questioning what is needed to heal from and transcend the harms enacted by the interconnected legacies of Afrikan enslavement, colonization, genocide, and racist oppression. Never before have there been so many invocations to deliberate on and atone for the crimes against humanity suffered by Afrikans who were trafficked and enslaved, and their descendants. A call for repair and restitution is foremost among the proposals to redress these crimes against humanity. Among the multiple features of that repair is the recognized need for psychological and spiritual rehabilitation to enable Afrikan-descended people to recenter or ground themselves culturally in, and spiritually to, the Afrikan Motherland through a process called rematriation. Rematriation is a term often deployed by Indigenous peoples of Abya Yala (the so-called Americas) to characterize the actions needed to heal the epistemic violence suffered at the hands of white enslavers and colonizers who brutality disconnected them from the land and epistemologies of their forebearers. It envisions “the restoration of a living culture to its rightful place on Mother Earth,” or the restoration of a people to “a spiritual way of life, in sacred relationship with their ancestral lands, without external interference” (Newcomb & Lenape , 1995, p. 3). A similar concept of rematriation is also being used in reference to the historical and spiritual restitution needed to repair the violations suffered by the descendants of those who were forcibly removed from Afrika. It is seen as the method by which the Afrikan Diaspora can return—culturally and spiritually—to its Indigenous knowledge archives and inform ways of thinking and being in the world. As both a theory and a praxis, it acknowledges that slavery not only entailed the theft of the body and its [pro]creations but also, and equally importantly, it The INOSAAR is an independent and voluntary reparations consultancy and advocacy group that acts as a selforganizing cross-community bridging agency. It is co-facilitated by the authors of this article, Nicola Frith, Esther Stanford-Xosei, and Joyce Hope Scott. 11
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