Medicine for the Resistance

The scene is familiar. A small child lies on a beach with his head towards the ocean and feet on dry sand. The image of Alan Kurdi, a three year old Kurdish Syrian boy has become part of the global psyche and in his book, What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad begins with the same image. But in this version Amir is a few years older. And he gets up.

Omar El Akkad is the author of American War which looked at the possible outcome of another civil war in the not too distant American future. This new book, What Strange Paradise, looks at the migrant crisis, and by crisis I mean migrants in a crisis that the west has created. Join us for a difficult, and spoiler-free, conversation about being unmoored and displaced, the losses that create us.

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Racism has re-created the world in Black and white, with Black inscribed as perpetually dangerous and white as the goal of progress and civilization. Colorism is how this plays out within categories of race and ethnic communities, darker skin associated with the qualities ascribed to Blackness and people with lighter skin seen as more credible, more welcoming. Erica Williams and Amber Stark join us to talk about colorism. It's not just Black and white.

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Racism re-created the world as Black and White, with Black at the bottom of the social hierarchy and white at the top. Others were added to the spaces between with darker skin associated with Blackness, even within communities seen as white. This conversation with Erica Williams and Amber Starks unpacks the ways in which we have internalized colonial ideas about race and color as well as how these beliefs play out in our broader society, who is acceptable and who is dangerous.

Colorism. It's not just Black and White.

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Borders are more than the lines between countries. States like Canada, the US, Australia, and Europe increasingly push their borders into other countries, tying foreign aid to agreements for preventing migrants from even getting to our borders. And the violence that creates is hidden from view.

This conversation with Harsha Walia is difficult and lays bare all the myths we hold dear about the welcome that refugees receive. The welcomes that we see are carefully managed and controlled, and used to hide the horrors of border imperialism.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Our conversation with Dr. Tope Adefarakan continues with a deeper look at Yoruba traditions and what it means to be Indigenous as Black and Native peoples. Building from WEB DuBois' book "The Souls of Black Folk" we talk about the duality that Indigenous peoples live within, engaging and challenging the dominant world.

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Mumilaaq speaks by Medicine for the Resistance

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Dr. Tope Adefarakan joins us to talk about her research into the Yoruba belief system, how it came to the Americas with enslaved people, and it's various adaptations in this new world. The pockets of belief that persist despite centuries of attempted erasure and how these beliefs enable organization and activism.

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A politics of refusal turns it’s back on patriarchy and just goes on building something new, something different, something closer to what we had before. A politics of refusal does not seek inclusion because if what are we seeking inclusion into? The people on this panel have all refused: refused to let Patriarchy define the boundaries or decide when we have transgressed them. Refused to be defined and in that way have defined refusal.

For racially marginalized people patriarchy is not always the final boss that needs to be dismantled, our men don’t benefit from it the same way that cis white men do, they don’t even benefit from it the same way that cis white women do. And Homonormativity means that queer white men often benefit from patriarchy as well.

Panelists include Robyn Bourgeois, Seán Carson Kinsella, Nick Thixton, and Taté Walker,

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What are the conditions that our communities need to see the Milky Way? To notice badgers and raccoons? To gather moss? To watch the growth of plants and their relationships to each other? To be undrowned.

This month authors Daniel Heath Justice (Badger and Raccoon) and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (Disordered Cosmos) join Ben Krawec, Celeste Smith, and Neil Ellis Orts to talk about living in relationship with the world around us, seeing these other than human relatives as something other than exploitable resources.

what would it take?

More info on this yearlong series of discussions about Indigenous Literatures at daanis.ca/ambe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

In this episode, recorded in February 2021, we talk with James about a mutual aid project in the Lakota lands of the Black Hills. There is a tension in finding ways to house and care for our own in the midst of colonial rules about place.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com