Reimagining A Normal Self
Last Fall, I was granted the opportunity by Colgate’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology to use my thesis research to develop and curate an exhibit. My exhibit, titled Imagining Indigeneity In A Global Future, displays material culture from the Guna, Yoruba, and Haudenosaunee peoples while highlighting Indigenous knowledge held in their ways of understanding human-environment interactions. Curating my very own exhibit felt like a dream: it was something I never imagined doing when I started my journey at Colgate. Being vocal about traditional African spirituality has not always been possible for African Americans to do without people associating negative stereotypes with these practices while masking it behind a side eye and silence. It didn't feel normal to me at first.
Yet, lately, I have realized that I have some biases to unlearn about myself; specifically, I have to reevaluate the parts of myself I’ve deemed strange. Doing so requires that I adopt a different self-evaluating lens. A lens that embraces the “different” things about me so that I may start to think of myself as normal – an effort that simultaneously decenters Western ideals and whiteness as the norm. Curating this exhibit has enabled me to see the deeply embedded processes of socialization that enable westernized notions of expression and belief to be held as a standard. A standard I found to be informing my perceptions of things contrary to it. In my experience, this process of unlearning involved a sort of mindful refusal. This notion is crucial as an anthropologist striving to grow and validate my practice of traditional African spirituality, known as Ifa, while existing as an African American woman.
Ifa refers directly to the word of Olodumare, which can be translated to mean God. A fundamental concept in Ifa is working with one’s own spirit for the purpose of connecting to a tangible higher version of self. Therefore, religion is a bodily experience for me as an African American woman initiated to Ifa. So much so that I often find myself feeling chills or goosebumps when I experience something that resonates with my spirit. One of these experiences was when my mother, Iya Ifatola, began to recite an opening prayer in Yoruba for the commencement of my exhibition. It brought me back to the same vivid warmth and comfort I felt when she prayed for me as a child. My mother has been integral to where I am in every aspect of my life: she has shown me the importance of strength and also vulnerability. In seeking strength during times of extreme vulnerability , my mother taught me to look to Ifa for hope and comfort. This lesson has be central for my ability to survive and thrive on this campus: Black folk existing in such a space is far from easy. I can always say that my spirituality and spiritual community on campus has brought a comfort to my body that is smooth like molasses, during times of deep unease here at Colgate.
Simultaneously, Colgate has been a relatively safe space for me to be vocal about and explore my traditional African spirituality – my mother even lectured about Ifa for my African American Religious Experience class with Professor Davenport. This moment was profound for me. Something about the same Black woman that has been so impactful to my journey of loving and embracing all aspects of my Blackness holding a presence in a similar way for other Black students on this campus, made me see that this event had moved the BIPOC community more than I anticipated. Simultaneously, this experience allowed me to learn from Haudenosaunee women such as Lisa Latocha, Summer Fraizer, Angela Ferguson, and Roni-Leigh Goeman while uplifting each other’s Indigenous ways of knowing and acknowledging difficult experiences living in America. I will forever be grateful to Rebecca Mendelsohn and the previously mentioned women above, for creating a space where Indigeneity could be freely discussed and for helping bring this exhibit to life.
I heard a lot of remarks containing disbelief that I had curated this exhibit. In some ways, it was a slap in the face to all the sweat, tears, and hard work I had put into curating this exhibit alongside writing my senior thesis last semester. If the person did not look like me, would there still be the same disbelief? Yet, I can also appreciate the flattery within the statement: it only means that I have done something great.
