CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

In her work, author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community. Her recent book, Kindred Creation, is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms. 

In this episode, Aida is joined by CIIS Director of the Center for Black & Indigenous Praxis Preston Vargas for a powerful conversation exploring African epistemologies and recalling the dignity and distinction of the African way of life. Aida shares her philosophical framework: remember, refuse, and reclaim as a vital guide for birthing new worlds and reclaiming land, language, lifestyle, and labor.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 19th, 2025. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

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Preston Vargas: Good evening, Aida.  

Aida Mariam Davis: Hey, Preston. Thank you so much for your willingness to host this conversation.  

Preston: Absolutely. I've been listening to you and Kindred Creation on audiobooks, so it's great to put the narrator and the voice of this creation to the person. So thank you so much for sharing space with us tonight. 

Aida: Yes. Thank you for your thoughtful curation and beautiful questions. I know that you will be offering this group today. I just am grateful to be in your space and to be here with all of you in the virtual CIIS community. 

Preston: Let's jump right in. There was so much in the book. And for me, I love the slip between how I feel and how I think. And it's recursive. It spirals out and spirals in. And in this work, you emphasize this necessity of Kindred Creation going radically to the root. And I can feel it in your writing. So what are some of the most overlooked or erased aspects of Black heritage that you hope readers will uncover and reclaim through this work and through their works? 

Aida: I think it's captured in the sentence. “You were African before you were anything else.” And what I mean by that, and that probably is a theme you felt throughout the book as well, which is we are all children of one mother, I believe, Africa. And we have been separated and severed and have had difficult experiences, frankly, because of kidnapping, enslavement, and even Africans on the continent not recognizing that interconnection. But nevertheless, we do have a united African beingness and divergent expression of that. And to me, that allows us to tap into our heritage, our humanity, and our culture in a new way. Specifically, when I think about unforgetting the past. Our past does not begin and end with American history, white history. Right? What did Malcolm say? The rock landed on us. Plymouth Rock landed on us. We did not, right, “discover” this land. Yes. And part of that is mathematicians, architects, medicine people, healers, they all have origins in Africa from what we can gather. Right? Beyond the literal sort of context of history as understood by Western society, right, like what is documented, there's also a part of history that was never documented but embodied. So we think about, you know, the ways in which folks in the hood pour a little liquor out for the homies because they transition. That's what we do in many places in West Africa, and they call it libation ceremonies. There are ways of braiding our hair, creating altars in our homes, right? All of these things, I think, are continuations of our histories that even subjugation, death, you know, all the systems of oppression that have worked against us could not take away from us. There’s that embodied piece. There's the fact that we know that trees communicate, which if you read the book, that will, that means something. But it's also, I think, the idea that we also have histories of rebellion, of refusal, of resistance. And, of course, we know of Harriet Tubman, we know of Nat Turner. You probably even know many of us of Maroon societies, but there are many other people and activities and places and ways of being and epistemologies that allow us to be insurgents in this environment. And those histories are important because they help us imagine not only what's possible, what we can do right now today, that it's not this, you know, out of the ordinary thing. And I think the book aims to be, like a quilt, taking the discarded pieces, stitching them together to make something beautiful that gives us warmth, that gives us, you know, comfort, that can hopefully be intergenerationally valuable, but also built upon, that everyone is adding a piece of cloth. And that's, I think, how our history is meant to be conveyed and not in what, you know, history books tell us about ourselves. 

Preston: And you utilize that, that use that quilt analogy in the book as well, I recognize that. And that really, it seems like it allows for multiple truths, like multiple, as you said, multiple expressions of blackness, multiple ways of knowing, multiple ways of being, instead of a meta-narrative, another meta-narrative. 

Aida: Exactly. And I think that's a trick of colonization, that there's a binary. 

Preston: Now you said, unforgetting, and I love that term. You also use re-memory. And so, like in Kindred Creation, you discuss how bodies hold memories, and you touch on black feminist fiction and historical fiction concepts of re-memory. So what is re-memory, and how can it offer pathways to healing and world-making, and this quilting you're talking about? 

Aida: First of all, Toni Morrison is the patron saint of the book and my life. So I'll just say that explicitly. And I know that you share the love of fiction. She's just been, you know, such a powerful ancestor in reminding me when I'm writing, I'm writing about people, and when I say that, I mean black people, right? And I could just be focused on that. In Beloved, one of her sort of most acclaimed novels, she has a main character, Sethe, who has a memory that is hard to explain because she did not personally experience it, but it's of her people being enslaved in Africa and being brought here. And Western settler colonial racial capitalist society will say, that's not real. That's a delusion, you know, sort of dismiss it as they do many Black and Indigenous ways of being, right, as primitive, as, you know, just not real. And the novel goes into great detail about that experience, which she calls re-memory, the ability to go back in time, even before your own, and have an embodied knowledge of what happened to you and your people, and be able to relay that for future generations. And I think that with that analogy, there's also another of furniture, sunken furniture. There are these vestiges, these, you know, pieces and parts of our lives that are sunken and worn with use, and we don't know why we just keep using them. We keep doing the same thing. And there's a subconscious element of, you know, how do we employ these metaphors to have us detach from our, maybe not indoctrinated, but the institutionalized ways that we've learned, things to be true. We know it's true because it's always been that way, right? That's the furniture analogy. We know it's true because we can prove it, or someone else said it was true. But the idea that a black woman can say, I know this to be true in my spirit, and I have visions, and I can, in a detailed way, explain those to you, that to me, not only should be valid, but we should be embracing as alternative ways of knowing. And we are, I think, doing ourselves a collective disservice when we dismiss it as, you know, folklore. I will say one last thing that I think is so critically important. When we think about the idea of the settler state calling something delusional, I think first and foremost of Malcolm X's mother, who they thought she was crazy, and they put her in an insane asylum because she believed she could be completely free. And they thought that that was so crazy that she needed to be institutionalized. Harriet Tubman was beat so bad that she started to have visions of complete freedom. And it is these visions that, you know, may have us, it have real implications, but if we stay true to them and really commit, we can really see how they change the world, by birthing Malcolm X and raising him and, of course, the Underground Railroad. So I think that there are real implications for saying, I believe what I saw, I believe what I think, I believe it. And that if they're telling you not to, there may be more reason to believe it. 

Preston: I can see this, like, literally living through your work. And I'm struck that you use parables. You know, it wasn't stories or myths or folklore, like you said, but it's, I don't know if you were using, if you were engaging in re-memory, but this co-creation of parables is amazing. You use parables as a powerful tool in this book. And tool might even be the wrong word, but you touch on this process of co-creating the parables and creation. What is it about this type of parable form, this type of co-creation, that lends itself to Black world making? And how do you see these parables shaping individual and collective liberation? 

Aida: From the outset, when I wrote the proposal from the book, for the book, I was so committed to the idea that this book needed to represent Black and African epistemologies and Indigenous. I really wanted melody. I wanted metaphor. Something you'll notice, I like a lot of alliteration. And I wanted sort of a miracle element of it, a metanoia, if you will. And I know from my own lived experience that my elders teach through allegories and parables. Parables are very important and not the religious kind necessarily, but of course they're used for religious purposes because they are so powerful. And they convey a very clear moral lesson that we should actually be applying in our lives. Like, you know, you can read a metaphor and be like, that makes sense. Good for those people. Parable is supposed to be, oh, I should change my paradigm. I should consider something new. Why would she use those words and not that word? And how does this part of the journey relate to that? And that was an intentional device that I wanted in the book. When I handed in the book to the publisher, they said, so are you going to cite who wrote the parables? And I said I wrote them. I made them up. But, you know, and I think they're, because the book is so heavy on the sort of colloquial and academic mix that this is a very different kind of writing. It's fiction, really. I just made them up. But I think that it also allows us to release ideas that we've been wed to or we've been indoctrinated with. And I think about the parable of the table being really specific to do that. The table is something we've all aspired to. Right? People are like, I want to seat at the table. If you don't have a seat, bring a folding chair, the seat, the table. This is an important pursuit. Many professionals, many people, and, you know, a lot of settings are looking for. And in the parable, I really questioned, you know, do you want a seat that your ancestors were denied? Your mother was denied? Do you want a seat where your friends are on the menu? Do you want to seat, like, what is the table really about? Is this where you want to be? And so I've noticed people reaching out to me about the power of the parables. The other stuff is really supporting, I think, the defining three parables in the book. I would love to hear what are your thoughts on parables? 

Preston: Well, first, like, the way you said about elders, I'm like, yeah, I get that. It's so subtle. Like, if you're not paying attention or if you're not used to it, you might not even know. There were times where I'm like, oh, wait, that wasn't just a story so-and-so told me. That was instruction. That was sacred instruction, sacred ritual. Like, these little drops, these little gems that just roll off their tongue. And there's this beautiful way that elders in my life have been able to, like, let them. They just drop the parable and go, you know? And it's your responsibility. I think it's my responsibility to take it up. As you say, like, you made them up. I want to push back and be like, yeah. Did you make them up? Or was the entire universe speaking through you? Right? That's how I, that's what I call oracular art. I am in. And I've told people, like, there's a difference. And I think Black folks, and I hear it in your writing. I feel it in your words. It's not just being a hollow reed, right? It's like whatever comes through you, it picks up little particles of who you are. It flavors the water. There's no such thing as like the hollow read and the water is tasteless. I can taste you all in this. And it's beautiful. 

Aida: Yes, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. 

Preston: That's my feeling on parables. You didn't make them up. 

Aida: Yes. Affirm. Yes. 

Preston: You do a fantastic job of working through Indigenous-based frameworks in the book. But before you touch on building Indigenous, excuse me, building frameworks of belonging, dignity, justice, and joy, which you call BDJJ, before you get to that step, you first chose the example of the Ethiopian Empress Taytu. I think I might be pronouncing her name. 

Aida: Yes, you're saying it, yes. 

Preston: And her MB, or like hell no response to maintaining the status quo. She had that response. And you highlight this as like, and I'll quote, “it's to highlight our unique knowledge of Africans and Black people and our ability to resist in our own way, rather than matching the violence inflicted upon us.” And so even before I get to this point where I can build a framework of belonging, dignity, and justice, I sometimes find myself saying the hell no, hell no to the status quo. But how can folks move from MB, or hell no, to leveraging their unique knowledges? 

Aida: Yes. I'll tell maybe this audience the shorter version of the story in there so I can segue. Taytu had a very comfortable life. She was a very wealthy woman, not only because she was the Empress, but before she became an Empress, she came from, you know, sort of a family with a lot of money. And she found it appalling that the Italians were occupying our land and just wanted to hang out indefinitely. And she had been looking around, you know, Africa, nobody stays indefinitely. They have an intent to take over. And her husband really was enjoying their time, their food, all the things that they could offer. And she decided that not only was this not going to work, she defied her husband in a deeply and continued to be patriarchal society. But she took it upon herself to create something immediately that would address the issues. And so she went to where they, you know, she figured out there where they were and used her unique knowledge of the land. She knew where the rivers, the lakes, she knew where everything was. And she took a couple hundred soldiers and dammed their water supply. It wasn't long after that that they left. And I think I'm only, you know, sort of putting myself in her shoes to say everyone was telling her no. Her husband, her parents, you know, she didn't have any children, so she wasn't necessarily embraced by– In the Ethiopian culture, it is just, like many patriarchal societies, women are there to sort of procreate and just be quiet. And she was the exact opposite of that. 

Preston: Hell no. 

Aida: Right, exactly. And she lived her life that way and she really freed our country completely. I bring those personal elements up because I think those people who have more intersections of identity are in the best position to lead any movement for freedom. Because she had experienced, you know, feeling like a pariah in so many different settings, feeling like she wasn't worthy, that her ideas weren't good, that she didn't understand, you know, politics in the way things were. She didn’t need to understand. She knew how to get what she needed done, and she did. And I think that this idea that all of us have, you know, everyone says you're an expert on religious experience or that you have unique knowledge, but do you act on it? How do you leverage your unique knowledge? Okay, I know where this is, I know where that is, and I see the problem, I've diagnosed it. What am I willing to do to address it? And for me, I read a lot of poetry. Nikki Giovanni's Revolutionary Woman has become the mantra of my life, which is this poem where she talks about, I thought I could start a revolution by having all the facts, by going to protest, by reading white people for who they really are, right? It's just along list of all the things she and many of us assume will create a revolution. And she ends by saying, but finally I realized the revolution was me returning and becoming a natural woman. And so for me, it's about who am I in my natural state? I'm about dignity. I'm about belonging. I know when people or, you know, institutions mess up, I'm about justice. I want to make it right. I'm about joy. That's the biggest thing I'm about. I'm here to celebrate life, living. So those are those words and why they're so important to alternatives, any alternatives that I create. But I think everyone should do the internal introspective work of who am I at my most natural state when I'm not hustling, when I'm not thinking about the next thing, when I'm not, you know, in flight, fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, right? If I'm not in my trauma responses, who am I? Some of us don't know her that well, you know, don't know that person. And I think that Taytu really knew herself and I wish that for, you know, all of us. 

Preston: This knowing yourself of knowing, of being able to diagnose what's happening. And I've been in that position that you're talking about and my fervor and fire was so strong, but I forgot the joy. I really did for years, for decades. I was the fighter, but I forgot the joy. And there is this like, I call it a tenor. There's like a tenor in your book. Like many freedom movements are rooted in resistance, but you take on refusal as an act of love, an act of love, and it offers a different perspective in Kindred Creation. It feels more like a call to explore refusal and resistance differently than I have in the past through generative, through world making, world building acts. Can you share like a paradigm shift from the book that challenges how we typically think about resistance? 

Aida: Yes, I mean, there are many ways I think for us to explore resistance. One is rest as resistance, The Nap Ministry and, you know, Trisha's amazing book and her whole approach is something I highlight. I think that, you know, I talk specifically about Black joy, that joy can have a race and that it's very clear about this very distinct feeling of being in touch with your humanity and heritage and that celebration of it. I think this might be the part of the episode where I talk about Kendrick Lamar and I talk about, you know, in subtle and indirect ways we can resist and refuse. And part of it, I think what was so beautiful about Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl, is he refused to make himself smaller. He did not, he was not humble and he refused to not bring his whole tribe with him. He literally brought everyone sort of with him that represented who he was and where he was from. And I could tell the entire 12 minutes he was performing, he was experiencing supreme joy, which brought me joy. And I think in the resisting of, you know, making yourself universal. There were a lot of people who weren’t Black that didn't understand what was going on. Just were like, what is this about? What did these things mean? He never abandoned himself. He never made himself smaller. I also, I mean, I talk about several athletes who do the same thing. Marshawn Lynch is well known for saying in interviews, I'm only here so I won't get fired. That is his way of being both subordinate but staying true to his humanity. Resisting in subtle, small, but powerful ways sends a message to institutions and individuals I am not leaving my body. I am not leaving myself. Not for you, not for anyone. I'm also not going to endanger myself. And I think that's a dance I want to offer. At no point should we be reducing ourselves or running away. At the same time, we have to be, we have to be alive. We have to be safe. And, you know, I think in that section, I tried to offer a lot of different ways we can explore refusal and resistance. I did not talk as much about violent resistance, though I believe it has a place. So it's not because I'm being sort of, you know, naive, but I think that there are so many other ways to explore that have not been written about that I wanted to offer people, everyday people, ordinary people like me, and famous folk, and, you know, academics and different kinds of Black folk. We are not tied to what people call us. We, you know, we respond to the name that we call ourselves. And that is resistance in and of itself. 

Preston: What would it look like to I'm like thinking, oh, what would it look like before I go to what, you know, whether it's work or whether it's protesting or whether it's creating something if I grab the hand of, you know, little Black joy, right? Because what my elders told me is like, you have a problem with something, try to make relationship with it. And like, oh, yeah, I'm missing Black joy. So how do I, okay, come on, Black joy, come with me, like, you know, to this thing, this thing, this thing. There are just little nuggets in here that I'm like having aha moments on about, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aida: Yes, I think a lot of it, just to add a point to that, is reframing. I talk about, you know, when I met Angela Davis, I asked her what it was like to be on the FBI’s most wanted list and being fugitive of the state. It wasn't very long until she corrected me and told me I was not a fugitive. I made myself unavailable. I think just that way. First of all, we need to make ourselves unavailable to a lot of things. First of all, secondly, please take that. Secondly, though, you make that paradigm shift, you're free. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not a criminal. You don't get to call me that. I'm back in my joy. 

Preston: I'm not taking that naming ceremony. 

Aida: You got that. That's on you. You can call whoever you want that, but I don't respond to that. And so I think having a love of language or a commitment to precision in language really can help liberate people to say, I can see maybe the realm of which you're saying that, but that doesn't apply to me. I don't accept that. 

Preston: It takes a little bit of imagination, too, I think, to be able to reframe these things. And when you write about imagination, you write about it as both a site of oppression or where oppression can occur and a force of liberation. And what strategies are available or offerings for reclaiming imagination from that colonial and capitalist constraint that you were talking about in the book? 

Aida: Yes. I read another novelist, a Kenyan novelist, Thiong’o, who wrote Decolonizing the Mind. And he very quickly in the book talks about how he was dreaming in the colonizer's language. I dream. I don't dream in my ancestral language. I don't dream in Amharic, I dream in English. And so there are parts of my culture I can't access. Language in our collective Indigenous traditions is, I think, to not just convey thoughts, but to have a melody, to be playful, to give joy, to be engaging. In ways that I don't think English has. And so in that way, there's a huge limit, I think, on our imagination. And on our connection– cause language also connects us to our ancestors. It connects us to future generations. There's that role that that shapes. I also think our birthright and our endowment is our ability to be inventive. You take away the drums, we start clapping. Anything you do, we're going to find another way to do it. And we're going to do it great, and it's going to be beautiful and joyful. And I think that that portion of our imagination, you mentioned iteration earlier. I think that we can really access ideas and ideologies that aren't widely accessible. Because, and this I believe very strongly, we are the closest to what freedom, I think we as oppressed peoples can create and find freedom more than any other group of people. Because we know very clearly what it means and what conditions need to exist for it to happen. And because of that, our imaginations expand very widely. We also know our oppressor, I think, better than they know themselves. So that also allows us to create new life and new ways of being that abandon those harmful ways, but that offer us new pathways. 

Preston: Yeah, many of us have had to learn those other ways in order to survive. And so being able to reframe them and restructure them. I'm curious as a person, I love words, and you and I have talked about fiction and novel, but what happens when words fail us? And how does this move through your body? How does it move through one's body? How do you draw it in through the pores and expel it out through the breath? 

Aida: Something I've observed to be true is that Black African, and Indigenous people are deeply spiritual and believe that the spirit world is with us. And I think because of that, and embodied knowledge, we can experience things that, you know, as you said, words fail us. I think about the power of poetry, the power of rap, the power of, you know, the ways we express ourselves that have been intentionally dismissed or denied, but really, I think, get deep into our core, the power of prayer. These are things that are integral to our ways of life that we should reconnect to, and that capitalism, since we don't have time for, right, because productivity is the P you should be focusing on, not poetry, not prayer, not these other elements that we know create life, really, create a meaningful, full life. So I think we should also be okay. I mean, so I have children, and I am always telling them boredom is great. It's okay that, like, you don't have everything lined up, we don't know where everything is. That's okay. It's actually, you know, the fertile ground for creativity. You can think about all the possibilities that there are, or you can do nothing. And I mean, have we ever had really the luxury in the history of this country to do nothing? 

Preston: As you say it, my body is clenching. My body is clenching. You know, that growing up doing nothing was frowned upon in my Black household, right? It's like you couldn't take a nap. You could not, uh-uh, there's no relaxing, right? And so as you're- 

Aida: Watch the TV? No. 

Preston: Yeah. I'm going to give you something constructive to do. That's what my mother always said. And I understand why. And at this age now, with my niblings being able to share, like, let's rest. Let's, you know, put your phones down. Let's be with each other. This is radical, is radical resistance. 

Aida: Yes. Have you heard of liming? 

Preston: Liming? No. Tell me what liming is. 

Aida: It's in, you know, sort of Caribbean culture. It's doing nothing. But I just like the way it sounds. Liming. You want to go lime? Yeah. Just do nothing. Together. 

Preston: Let’s get ripe. 

Aida: Exactly. Yes.

Preston: I find this work as what I, um, it feels emergent to me, right? Like as a creator, I'm curious what in this book or what in this process emerged that you weren't expecting, whether it was part of the book or how it played out, you know, in your being in life and world and relationships. 

Aida: As you said that, I started to laugh because, um, so I was pregnant three times while writing this book. And the third one, I was very surprised by. So when you said that, I'm like, it's the third child. That's what really emerged and surprised me. Um, but within the book, the context of the book, um, the book was originally entitled Decolonize Design. So that was a major evolution to get to Kindred Creation. And decolonize had taken up the concept, had taken up a lot of space in my life. I have since released that from my ministry. It's no longer something I'm called to do. To me, it feels like fixing something someone else broke. And I'm not interested in doing that. It is good and meaningful work. I just don't want to do it. Uh, so I have to release Decolonize. I also released Design because my experience in the design thinking world and just having a lot of, like, what does design mean? If you ask 10 people, you might get 10 different definitions. It's landscaping, it's architecture, it's social services, right? It's improving or design. And so that also felt like it needed to, I needed to release because I'm not interested in just improving or reforming something. I am fundamentally to your point, pulling things from the root, more abolitionist. Like I want complete freedom. I want something completely different than what has been offered. So then, and this is how I arrived at belonging, dignity, justice, and joy. I go to this proverbial drawing board of how do we organize ourselves as Black people, as Africans, as Indigenous? I mean, most societies are organized around kinship. They're organized around, you know, family, tribes, relationships, ultimately. And so kindred is, you know, an ode to that, but it's also, I love Octavia Butler. She wrote a book, Kindred, and it was about looking back into history while also being in this day and age. So it had double meaning there and creation. This is an important evolution, not just because I was pregnant, but I think because creation stories create, the concept of creation is so important in Indigenous society globally. It's how we tell our history. It's also how we give life. Creation is about getting something like, you can create a program, you can create a human. There are a lot of different, but creation requires gestation and conception and, you know, a care and concern and nurturing that's very different than design. And so I iterated on that and creation has really been, I think, one of the most generative. That's why the whole third section is about reclaiming creation, ultimately. It's reclaim, but it's about creation because it is something we all have the ability and access to do. We don't need permission to create, and we really can iterate from there. So my creation and your creation could be similar, but they could be totally different, and there’s no, you know, It doesn't feel like it's competitive. With design it’s like there's a qualitative standard, and if you're not meeting that, or quantitative also, then it's not good enough. Nobody says your creation- your baby's not good enough. Maybe the world is, but I'm saying, you know, you give birth, it's a beautiful baby, right? So that's a big evolution paradigm shift that I personally have had just in writing the book. 

Preston: I love this yes and of, yes, there are folks working in decolonizing, and what about feeding the world? Like, what about feeding the world you want to create? And I find that not as many folks are doing that, and this is that sort of invitation. You're repositioning world making as an ongoing process, but also a communal process rather than a destination. And so in this communal process, what might be some of the frontiers that, oh, that's such a gross word, what might be some of the unknown lands that Black world makers, you know, might be going through next? And what tools, you know, what can they learn from Kindred Creation that can help them on this journey, this ongoing journey? 

Aida: You know, a wild idea I've been thinking about playing with is, do we create our own society, our own city, our own little community where we embody the ways that we value? I think about the great dismal swamp where, you know, runaway four million slave people created their own village, and they abandoned capitalism, and they used sort of African bartering techniques. They went back to who they were, and they created, in essence, an African village here in America. Something I'm interested in, what would it look like with, you know, a few families to think about literally creating our own world, our own, I mean, with the tax on everything. I would say on education, on this, on that, but like with the tax on everything in this country, we have nothing to lose but our chains, as the thought says. So why not? 

Preston: Oh, could you say that again? 

Aida: We have nothing to lose but our chains. And so why not experiment with having a little freedom school for our kids, you know, a couple of families. Why not do meals together? Why not create mutual aid? I mean, I live in Los Angeles, and in the aftermath of the fire, I've never seen such generosity in my life. People giving, I mean, and I felt compelled too, like, here, take my kids bed, they don’t sleep anyway, just take the bed, you know, like, giving all that we had. And I’m like, what if this was a way of living? That we were just that generous and we were just that caring. Oh, this happened to you. I'm sure there are things that are happening to my neighbors right now, that I don't know about that they could also use my care and generosity for. And that requires deeper relationships. So, but I think you do that through trying to build organizations or institutions. I am a long time organizer, so we're always trying to build organizations. And, you know, one that I saw my parents create very informally was called an [name] where basically, and it comes out of peasant society, they would sort of an insurance policy, but it's about breaking bread together and joyfully gathering, but everybody pays every month. And if someone passes, if you have funeral costs, if you have something like all the money just goes to the person who needs it. But then every month you just get back to gathering, eat together, rotate who's house. To me, growing up, I thought it was actually just social. I had no idea money was transacted. I was just observing the fun. And then, you know, as I got older, I'm like, oh, wow, everyone's helping with this funeral. Everyone is helping with this cancer treatment. We are all, and so these are small ways I think we can return to our epistemologies, our ways of life, but also actually meet our needs, actually feel whole and fulfilled. Because I'm not interested in just building, building, building and harvesting in 20 years. I want to do something now. I want to experience something now, you know, and I think, you know, putting some music and food to a lot of things makes it better. That's my experience. And to the extent we can do that, I think we should. 

Preston: I'm familiar with that concept, although I'm familiar with it from Susu. Like contributing money every month and then folks, you know. How do, like, I think from, from my Cape Verdean culture, there was a level of trust there. And maybe it's because a lot of folks were, had migrated to the U.S. They needed each other. It's really hard for me to imagine doing that with a lot of my very Americanized friends. The trust is missing. What, how do we get to that place of trust where I can trust my well-being and it really is kinship? 

Aida: Yeah, that interdependence, you know, capitalism has really become just a disease because of the fact that, you know, there's never enough. You just keep wanting more because, you know, I think when I think of my friends and possibly doing this, I am actually concerned about consistency. Would you come regularly? You may come and you may deposit, you know, do it once or twice, but would you take this seriously? Or would a competing event trump this very quickly because you seem healthy or you have no need for it, right? And I think the challenge for those of us who are trying to have a paradigm shift, I mean, I guess I would turn back to situ. We don't need everyone. If you can do it with three people, let's start with that and maybe build momentum and like keep it sacred. You mentioned that, like these rituals, you make it almost like ceremony and it does have to have values along it. People have to be like, I want, this will add enrichment to my life and yours and I care about that and want to do that. But when I use that as my filter, I have like three people, three families, three, you know, groups of people I can think of and that might just be it. And you just do that. And most good things, I think, gain momentum and that is not necessary. This is something, Preston, I actually want your thoughts. I struggle with the concept of consensus. I do. The idea that everyone needs to agree or we all need to be, I don't think so. I'm not sure I believe in that, you know? I would love to hear your thoughts, but you know, I think that is an idea that may stop us because we may feel, well, I don't have enough people or it's not, you know, it's not growing. It's not gaining momentum because we want people to be all on the same page, or do we? What do you think? 

Preston: Consensus and the consensus process, it takes forever, but I feel like that's not a problem. Actually, it's challenging my, you know, capitalism and my dude fix now, fix now. What I have found in the consensus process that trips it up is sometimes, is the attachment, is the ego. It's sometimes about being right instead of being joyful or being happy. I can understand blocking things in the consensus process if it is out of my, if it's out of our values, but I might not agree with something. I don't need to block it. I can let it, in that consensus process, I can let it happen. I can still be present. It's not against my values. It just might not be what I would have chosen, but I love the people in the group, and I'm here in that consistency. And again, like for me, that is about negotiating relationships. Relationships take work, right? And there is a meet, we meet each other in places. And for me, consensus process, I also say I will not do consensus process with folks I know I cannot trust. 

Aida: That part, yep. 

Preston: Yeah. And in those terms, like, as I'm reading through the book, I'm also thinking like, wow, I can be very, there are ways in my life that I can be much more discerning about what energies I let in, where I put my focus, and how does that play out? And I'm curious, like, first of all, I love the chunking up in the three different sections, but also how you go into them. And I was like, this took a lot of like, red lines, like a lot of discernment to like think, and I'm wondering, what is your discernment process? How do you come to that place? Not only of like, what goes in the book, but what is right in your life right now? And what is not? 

Aida: I appreciate you with the red lines, because the way I was like, no, revise, no, and just a lot of intention. I hope you feel a lot of intention in it. My sort of discernment practices, I look for inspiration everywhere. And I need to do a better job. And thank you for reminding the universe brought me you to remind me that like, I do, I mean, I say, I believe I have prophetic messages. So I do believe that messages are being transmitted or shared with me, and they're my responsibility to share. So sometimes I'm like, I actually can't locate precisely where I got this idea, but it needs to be expressed. And when I say I look for inspiration everywhere, I really learned that from Chinua Achebe. Another novelist. Novelists, right, they have just given me everything. Where, you know, he describes ants and anthills in this event, and just like mundane things have so much to offer us. And so like, I look, if I'm at the farmer's market, I am paying attention. I spent a lot of days pretty exhausted, but I am looking around like, why did, why is this happening? What are they, you know, what could this mean, sort of looking for maybe not signs, but messages, if you will, in the universe and where I'm at, and my life's experience has taught me that what the world calls ordinary people have the most information to offer us, the most knowledge. And so I have always gone to those places, to those sources to get direction. 

Preston: I find that like this, the messages are everywhere, because the universe, the land, the ancestors, everything is always speaking, there's always a communication going through, there's always a resonance, whether it's understood or not. When folks are reading your book or listening to your book, if they could take away an essential call to action, or maybe some essential pieces for their heart from Kindred Creation, what would you hope it would be?

Aida: I hope that they would feel inspired to remember, bring together memories of their ancestors, sort of follow the cycle, the book is intended to be circular, the cycle of the parts, but really to do so in a way that I hope I did, which is never abandon yourself. You are your center. Everything you know should be at the center, your lived experiences, your favorite songs, your favorite books, the people who have mattered to you, they need to be, you know, however you want to express them, express. And I think, I really hope that people read this and say, I could do that, I could write a book like this, or I want to write a book like this, or maybe not a book, make a video, whatever your creative outlet is, but that is inspiration to create life-giving alternatives in death-making situations, knowing that there's always something else you can make in that. Alternatives are within us and within reach. 

Preston: And those times where freedom, because you've mentioned freedom is not individual, but it's also not linear. In those times where one can't feel freedom because we're, you know, maybe we're in that cycle, that recursive cycle back in or back out, what is something folks can hold on to or let go of in those moments? 

Aida: I think Black and Indigenous people need to remember we have always been free. There has been no moment in time because freedom is, you know, an internal place first. Now, have we also experienced all the things that I mentioned and remember? Of course, but just like our minds have been free. We have always had a sense of freedom. We've always expressed ourselves. It's important we know who we are and whose we are. We are, you know, God don't play about me. I know that part. And I think God don't play about the Black diaspora. And we have to remember that, you know, and people say, you know, walk as if the ancestors, you know, created the room for you and they did in a literal way. I believe that, that their spirits are there, that they have, you know, there's a portion in the book where I talk about colonial hauntings. Those come back when there's unfinished business. That's that's just what it is. And so I think that there's this idea of moving with the authority of being. And I think about belonging. For so long, I thought belonging was physical, emotional, psychological safety, often that other people created, but that I could experience and walk into. I have now released that. I belong anywhere I go. In this room, I belong. If I'm down the street, I belong there. Now are the you know, is the ground fertile necessarily? Do I feel all those things? No, but do I belong? Do I do I feel like I've earned the space to be there? Absolutely. I have no question of the Black woman. I had to work two to three times more than the next person. I absolutely belonged. But more than that, I have found in my life, home is where my intention is. It's where my loved ones are. So if belonging is home, my people are there. I'm good. Like it doesn't have to be the perfectly curated it's now giving back to the settler way of like, things have to be perfect. Things have to be this way for it to be right. And so I think in so many different ways, we have to just question what we think we know. 

Preston: The last question for me is actually about, well, maybe I'm asking you to not prophesize, but I'm curious because you do receive messages all around. And where you live, LA just experienced really, you know, the lands, the people, the animals, everyone involved, it was quite traumatic. What is what might the land be saying and the community, the soul of the communities be saying and sharing right now in these moments? 

Aida: Yes. I love that you frame land as a relative or as like a sentient being because it is. Those fires to me represent a lot of different things. One, the speed and might and abundance by which it moved through communities reminded me of his power, of fire's power. It also reminds me though that after most many fires, right, the land is more fertile. And what that means in terms of what we want to rebuild or build. I also think that, you know, our non-human kin experience this in large part because of human irresponsibility, right, or lack of stewardship because for Indigenous people, we've had controlled fires. Like we have ways of, right, making sure either this doesn't happen or that this happens in a way that protects all life. So in that way, it's a loud reminder to really return to Indigenous ways. I mean, I also work outside of, you know, writing a book for the Sierra Club and we have been bringing the alarm about climate change and all of the things that we are now experiencing. But I think that this fire, I have so many thoughts because in some ways it has devastated communities. But in wealthier neighborhoods, it has become the ticket to like rebuild bigger and better. And it really, I mean, it shows the tale of two cities very clearly. It has exposed, let me say this differently, what has already been there but magnified it and really amplified disparities and devastation. And what I find poetic, sadly poetic, is that it doesn't matter where you live in Southern California, not just LA, your air quality has become hazardous. Our air is no longer our water, the fish, right? And so it is omnipresent. This isn't their problem. I don't live in a place that was impacted personally by the fires in terms of my home, but my land, air, water, all the elements, absolutely. And we're inhaling it, we are, you know, and in that way, it's very omnipresent and, you know, I am sitting with the fact you reap what you sow. And whether it is my, I don't believe it's my fault, but it has become my responsibility to really now become aware of what are the Indigenous practices. How do we tend to the land? I'd always let that go to, that’s the government thing? It's out of my scope. I don't know anything about that. So, but now I'm very interested in the literal tending of the land and protection of human and non-human kin in ways I hadn't been previously. And I know on the news, it probably looked a lot worse than maybe it was. 

Preston: Well, what you're saying about taking care, you know, re- engaging in remembering and bringing back these, you know, life-affirming ways of stewarding the land, that I think dovetails so lovely with this intention of small local village community in these present day times. Aida, it's been a pleasure and an honor to be able to share space and time with you and to hear your thoughts, to experience the radiance from your heart and also the fantastic work in your book. It has been with me in the garden as I've been listening, it's been at my kitchen table. Thank you so much for what you've offered. 

Aida: Thank you so much for the space, for adding so much light and love to the conversation and for sharing your brilliance with us. 

Preston: You're welcome. Thank you everyone who's joined us tonight and for listening. We'll say have a great evening. Peace.

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team also includes Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.

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