This Is Why We Remember: Celebrating the Medicine of Memory
By Zach Serrano
November 22, 2021
“Ahora sí a recoger, verdad? Dicen que la fruta ya no sabe.”
- Lila Downs
“And now to pick up, no?” Lila Downs’ caption to this photo of her ofrenda captures the sentiment of tending to our altars when “the fruit no longer tastes.” But these words do more than remind us of the need to clean and tidy things up after the end of our Día de los Muertos ceremony. When we clean away the delicately placed pieces of our offerings, we pick up more than flowers, photos, or pieces of fruit. We gather and take with us the medicine of memory. The prayers we set down in the food and drink, the candles and cempoalxochitl, hold the stories and wisdom of those we called to visit. In honoring the responsibility of setting up and taking down the altars we build, there is a practice of connecting to and celebrating the sacredness of the ancestral wisdom and ways of being that help sustain us as Indigenous people.
There are lessons if we listen to and learn from the leadership of Native people and Indigenous communities. In Lak’Ech, Ubuntu, All My Relations, Tat tvam asi, Namaste, and countless other iterations of this same concept, guide us across history, geography, and culture to a similar core belief of interconnectedness and recognition of a collective humanity. To recognize “tu eres mi otro yo” - that despite our differences we are interdependent reflections of each other - is to acknowledge our fates are linked. In the collectivism represented in the multiple manifestations of Indigenous cultures across the world, there is evidence to prove that we are not free until we are all free. There are examples and models for living in ways that respect and honor the indisputable fact that any act that harms a piece of humanity is a pain we each ultimately carry – a piece of us that we each have to heal.
This land was Mexican once
was Indian always
and is.
And will be again.
-Gloria Anzaldúa
Rooting ourselves in the blueprints we inherit from the wisdom of our ancestors supports us to exist in ways that contribute to balance, harmony, and healing for our collective humanity. It also illuminates our sacred fires, our lifelines to the relationship we share with nature and the land. We don’t survive without nuestra madre tierra, Tonantzin, Mother Earth, or any other name we call them by. This information is not radically new for Indigenous people, and quite frankly, we don’t have time to debate the science of climate change.
The time is now to uplift and amplify the voices and leadership in Native communities. From Standing Rock, to the defeat of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and in the current blockade at Fairy Creek, land and water protectors struggle and fight to protect the survival of our planet. Our elders can teach us the way to get right with the Earth and help us to repair and rebuild, if we honor, listen, and learn from them. The ancestors know the way.
In the traditions I have been taught, we talk of the inherent duality of existence. When we give it a name, we call it ometeotl. Ometeotl teaches us to exist beyond the barriers of binary thinking, that there is always an either/or/yes/and when it comes to the complex ways in which humans show up and take space in our world. Ometeotl provides us direction in navigating the nuance of interdependence and preserving our collective well-being. So any understanding or invocation of ancestral wisdom must simultaneously hold space and honor for its most authentic manifestation in our physical world – the voice and leadership of young people. The pulse of their walk through this world matches the beats we drum for songs older than our personal memory. The youth know the way.
Recognizing and centering Indigenous leadership needs to extend beyond a month designated to celebrate Native American heritage. It is also important to not sanitize the concept of ancestral wisdom as a mere portal to a sense of interconnectedness that will “save” the planet and humanity.
Within Indigenous community, yes, there is ceremony, tradition, and knowledge that can lead us all back to our path to a collective humanity. But for Indigenous people, it is also something that fortifies us from spirit to DNA with a power and dream to persist against the onslaught of settler colonialism and present day racism. Despite every effort across space and time to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” we remain. Against each attempt at erasure, we exist. In the face of genocide, we have resisted and survived. This is why we remember. There is great power in collective witnessing, in refusing to stop telling and remembering our stories. Honoring and celebrating the sacredness of our ancestors is one of our greatest acts of resistance and survival.
Just as the cleaning of a Día de los Muertos altar isn’t about picking up and putting away, don’t stop amplifying the voices and leadership of Indigenous people at the close of this month. La medicina de nuestres antepasades is something we carry with us even after the ceremony ends.
Quisieron enterrarnos, pero no sabían que éramos semillas.
- un dicho Mexicano, originada por la poeta griega Dinos Christianopoulos
They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds.
- A Mexican saying, originated by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos