“Events of the day become the history of tomorrow, hence a people without the knowledge of their history are like a tree without roots.” MRR/The Right Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey
These words have rung in my ears like a bell, for more than 3 decades. It was in many ways these words that really helped to focus my mind and begin the long journey towards Afrikan Spiritual identification. Before this I and most of the WestIndian/Coloured/Black children growing in Great Britain viewed ourselves as a people without history. Our school experience placed us outside recognised human activity. We were told or in other ways led to believe, that Afrikans had not participated in the growth of human civilisation, that our ancestors were savages, living without the attributes of culture and human society. It was suggested that our enslavement had actually benefitted us overall. After all were we not now civilised and able to access the western world and all its glories. Oh, how grateful we should be.
As Queen Victoria’s Government exhorted, “...that they should make every exertion in their power to obtain instruction for themselves and their children; and that they should evince their gratitude for the blessings of freedom, by such present sacrifices for this object as shall make freedom most conducive in the end to their happiness and moral and spiritual well-being.” (Gordon 1971)
Should we not be ever grateful to these our most beneficent saviours, when we realise how much they have sacrificed so that we could be free and recognised as humans.
However, once we become clear on the truer history of our people, we find that what was termed mumbo jumbo was in fact fully formed languages, equal to and in many ways superior to anything that was in Europe, then or now. The symbolism that is found in for example the Akan Adinkra is ingenious. Each symbol reiterates a moral principle for us to adhere to. Gye Nyame, asks us to keep the faith in the Afrikan creator and to be steadfast. Sankofa represents my opening statement, look to your past in order to understand where you are at present and where you are going to. These are just two of many symbols found all over the Afrikan continent which allow us to see that the societies in Afrika, before the advent of, either, the Arab or the European, were fully formed in terms of moral, spiritual and social norms.
These words have rung in my ears like a bell, for more than 3 decades. It was in many ways these words that really helped to focus my mind and begin the long journey towards Afrikan Spiritual identification. Before this I and most of the WestIndian/Coloured/Black children growing in Great Britain viewed ourselves as a people without history. Our school experience placed us outside recognised human activity. We were told or in other ways led to believe, that Afrikans had not participated in the growth of human civilisation, that our ancestors were savages, living without the attributes of culture and human society. It was suggested that our enslavement had actually benefitted us overall. After all were we not now civilised and able to access the western world and all its glories. Oh, how grateful we should be.
As Queen Victoria’s Government exhorted, “...that they should make every exertion in their power to obtain instruction for themselves and their children; and that they should evince their gratitude for the blessings of freedom, by such present sacrifices for this object as shall make freedom most conducive in the end to their happiness and moral and spiritual well-being.” (Gordon 1971)
Should we not be ever grateful to these our most beneficent saviours, when we realise how much they have sacrificed so that we could be free and recognised as humans.
However, once we become clear on the truer history of our people, we find that what was termed mumbo jumbo was in fact fully formed languages, equal to and in many ways superior to anything that was in Europe, then or now. The symbolism that is found in for example the Akan Adinkra is ingenious. Each symbol reiterates a moral principle for us to adhere to. Gye Nyame, asks us to keep the faith in the Afrikan creator and to be steadfast. Sankofa represents my opening statement, look to your past in order to understand where you are at present and where you are going to. These are just two of many symbols found all over the Afrikan continent which allow us to see that the societies in Afrika, before the advent of, either, the Arab or the European, were fully formed in terms of moral, spiritual and social norms.
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