Читать книгу My Grandmother's Hands - Resmaa Menakem - Страница 12
ОглавлениеOur bodies exist in the present. To your thinking brain, there is past, present, and future, but to a traumatized body there is only now. That now is the home of intense survival energy.
Most of this book is set in the present, but small parts of it will trace two bloodlines of trauma from the past to the present.
First, we’ll trace trauma as it was passed from one European body to another during the Middle Ages, then imported to the New World by colonists, and then passed down by many generations of their descendants.
Second, we’ll trace trauma as European colonists instilled it in the bodies of many Africans who were forcibly imported as indentured servants, and later as property, to the New World. They, in turn, passed down this trauma through many generations of their descendants.
On this same soil, trauma also followed another earlier path: one that spread from the bodies of European colonists to the bodies of Native people and then through many generations of their descendants.
An estimated eighteen million Native people were custodians of the North American continent when European colonists arrived. They and their ancestors had lived here for an estimated 14,000 years.
Today this same land contains over 204 million white Americans, over forty-six million Black Americans, and just over five million Native Americans. The story of the unique arc of trauma in the Native American body is only now beginning to be told. I don’t describe this arc (except tangentially) in this book. I hope a wise and compassionate Native writer soon will.
In the meantime, I offer my respect and acknowledgment to the people who were stewards of this land long before folks from Africa and Europe made it their home.
