RACE While modern culture places the focus of discussions about race on people of color, all people were racialized by the colonizer’s creation of a group of people called “white” in 17th century colonial America. No racial inequities, structural or otherwise, can truly be removed without deep understanding and uprooting of white racialization. Learn more here.
“The only way to bear the overwhelming pain of oppression is by telling, in all its detail, in the presence of witnesses and in a context of resistance, how unbearable it is. If we attempt to craft resistance without understanding this task, we are collectively vulnerable to all the errors of judgement that unresolved trauma generates in individuals.” ~ Aurora Levins Morales
GENDER A well-known yet mostly invisible genocide is the mass extermination of (mostly) femme people in the 17th century under the pretext of “witchcraft”. As wisdom-keepers of indigenous medicine arts and other whole-body knowing, femme people presented a threat to religious and political power structures of the time. The genocide wrought on keepers of traditional wisdom helped to destroy our natural community structures and balance. Restoration of balance between feminine and masculine energies in all bodies no matter how gendered, and in all systems, family, cultural, political, religious, and otherwise, is crucial to survival of the planet and species.
“Balance is not a passive resting place—it takes work, balancing the giving and the taking, the raking out and the putting in.” ~Robin Wall Kimmerer
CLASS In every society, in every place, in every time, there have been theories and practices of hierarchy among living beings. In the unfettered capitalism of the US today, a worship of dollars over life is actively creating a sociopathic culture in which all classes are colonized by the 1%.
“Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the [Divine].
~ t s eliot, The Rock (1934)
ABILITY Disabled bodies offer profound insights into the true nature of human-being and human-knowing. Centering disabled wisdom-keepers benefits all bodies on the path to freedom. Learn more here.
“Ableism, coupled with white supremacy, supported by capitalism, underscored by heteropatriarchy, has rendered the vast majority of the world ‘invalid’.” ~ Sins Invalid
ETHNICITY As if it isn’t enough to be racialized, gendered, classified, and disabled, modern culture further dissects beings by their ethnic origins, ignoring the fact that modern science observes that what we recognize as human today originated in Africa millions of years ago; we can all trace our ancestry to Africa. The ethnicities we’ve developed since then are a celebration of human adaptability and creativity, not indicators of biological difference or markers or inferiority or superiority.
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” ~ Audre Lorde
Sangha Is All
An embodied awareness community
The Sangha is All community practices with awareness of
Race, Gender, Class, Ability and Ethnicity:
“Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.” ~ Kimberle Crenshaw