Language as Protection in the Age of Coloniality
As I said goodbye…
…to my first vat & started to nurture the next one that will take me on my Indigo journey, I've been spending time listening to discussions on textile histories and techniques from my homeland, presented in my mother language. Yes, whenever the normalized brutality of western society, capitalism and all the bizarre narratives of the day make me sway with anxiety and a strong, inescapable sense of dissonance, it's hearing my people speaking n my mother tongue that brings me back to the reassuring perspectives of the non-Anglo-American influenced worldviews.
As I listened I couldn't help thinking about language as protection. I realized that there's still a wealth of indigenous knowledge in places like Sri Lanka which are held within the protections offered by the local languages. Knowledge schools, ideas, skills and techniques from so many disciplines that have never been translated into English. Never been exported wholesale by colonizers and foreigners . I couldn't help thinking that our indigenous languages might well be one of the last remaining protections we have against the continuing colonial forces of exploitation and appropriation.
I think about the time when my mother worked with a craft collective in the mid 90's, whose aim was to prevent the rural skill drain into the cities. An attempt to give rural women and artisans a platform through which they could make a living, continue to live in their villages and support their families. This was years before craft collectives were trendy/Instagram worthy. My mind went back to an incident which occurred with a group of craft tourists from a European country who spent time amongst these artisans, went back to their home countries and, with the invisibility afforded by the pre-social media age, went on to wholesale copy and poach the ideas, techniques and visual language which had 'inspired' them. Something that had only come to light because of a bizarre coincidence involving a craft expo years later. Indeed I see this vein of talk in the craft circles on Instagram so regularly I wonder if it is just another dysfunction normalized because 'everyone does it'.
This typical narrative of l-went-to-India-&-was-so-inspired, is magnificent at hiding a plethora of sins. Does inspiration justify acts of appropriation and cultural exploitation? Does erasure of the source peoples and cultures matter less than the gratification of I see-l like-l take?
Recently a friend on Instagram sent me an article on indigo history, in which I read this incredible quote from a book titled Enslaved People & Fast Fashion, by Katie Knowles. "They exploited not just the bodies...but the mind, this way of knowing from all these people around the world who were experienced in making indigo...". You see, although the most gross level exploitative acts of colonialism may have ended, the heirs of colonial cultures continue to exploit the mental, intellectual & emotional spaces of those of us who are heirs to the colonized experience. It happens in broad daylight, embalmed in the language of artistic 'inspiration'.
One of the most humbling and enlightened things I heard from a white woman in response to my very first post on #brownhandsblue was this: "I have been averse to working with this plant & feel uncomfortable seeing other white people building their brands around it. But I've never been able to accurately articulate why. Thank you for this gift of language that I can integrate & use to continue spreading this message & directing financial support towards the hands where it belongs." This utterly un-entitled attitude is the exception that defines the norm. White entitlement has become so insidiously accepted and entrenched that this wonderful human's unabashed disavowal of it touched me deeply. Now I'm not saying all white people working with Indigo, stop right here & now! But how many will read these words and actually check their unaddressed sense of entitlement? Check whether their use/ appropriation of techniques, textile heritage & cultural artifacts has led to the erasure of the people who are at the source of these art forms?
It is simple political economy really. Colonialism has ensured that the playing field is not level. Colonialism Part Two, i.e.western capitalism, has ensured that those who reaped the benefits of the colonial system will continue to remain the privileged and the visible. While those who were enslaved will continue to be exploited, even as their invisibility is shrouded in the flowery language of inspiration & exaltation. Who is willing to give up their entitlement so that the leveling can occur? Conscious sacrifice of one's own desires to uplift another, when you have nothing to gain from that upliftment, is not exactly what the colonial mind frame is known for tho is it? But it is exactly the shift of mindset that although the wolf of colonialism has been left behind in history, that coloniality is not taken in sheep’s clothing into the future.
With their command of the English language, the disproportionate amount of visibility on social media and the convenience of the right skin color, those who use the skills and techniques innovated by other cultures continue to enjoy the profits, the glamour and the illusion of 'uniqueness' that these art forms bring to their brands and online personas.
So while this remains the case, I will celebrate the small victories of at least knowing that there are some spaces, like those afforded by our ancient languages, where the cultural poachers cannot reach us.
Namaskaram
Daki
