“Lo que se hereda no se hurta/ What you inherit you cannot steal. “
This dicho is a lesson for all of us Q/POC struggling with identity and our “place” in this assimilationist nation of neo-colonizers and appropriators. That which is already ours by nature, that which is our inheritance…we can’t be accused of stealing or steal. We don’t have to. No, it’s not even about “taking it back” or ‘occupying’ or ‘getting back to x, y, z’. It’s already ours. Been ours. Y ni podemos vender. (We can’t sell it) Y nadie nos puede robar de nuestr@ herencia. (No one can rob us of our heritage/inheritance).
Angela Lugo (a Puerto Rican yerbera/ herbalist) says in ‘Testimonial for the ancestors’: “We are the sum of our ancestors.”
The knowledge of our ancestors, our inheritance, can never be taken away from us. Though others may try to eradicate it or even borrow it and sell back a flawed and incomplete version, we carry in our Spirit all the knowledge amassed over thousands of years by our ancestors. Relearning/rediscovering can seem like an uphill battle when systems are set against us reclaiming our legacies, but it can and is being done. So don’t be disheartened. It will take some time to rediscover what took centuries upon centuries and generations upon generations for the colonizers to try to eliminate, assimilate or destroy. Rest be assured that it IS happening and at a faster rate than the actual destruction.
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