85. Wisdom – Sister Peace

We all have some ideas that are engraved in us, these judgments and falsehoods that hold us back.

As I sit here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this morning, I think of an experience I had recently. Just a few days ago, I went to the city’s historic Plaza, where protestors were celebrating the mayor’s order to remove an obelisk erected in 1868, engraved with the words: “To the heroes who have fallen in the various battles with the ______ Indians in the Territory of New Mexico.”

One Native American woman got up and told the story of how, for over a century, the blank was engraved with the word “savage.” Then in 1974, her grandfather dressed up in a blonde wig and a pair of coveralls so that he’d look more “official,” went up to the monument and chiseled it out. To me, it’s a powerful metaphor. It speaks not only to these external monuments, but also to what is engraved inside of us.

It brought me back to the first time I went to Africa, to visit one of our Buddhist communities in Botswana. I have many indelible memories from that trip, including the experience of being surrounded by mostly black folk—an amazing thing!—and seeing so many in positions of power. I also see the moment when I was dining with a gorgeous African human rights activist and attorney.

She was a total dynamo, but still I had a moment of doubt: Could she really be all that? I knew immediately where that idea came from. I was arcing back in history, back to when I was growing up, when there was this question, even among black people, of whether you should hire a black attorney, or go to black doctor—or should you get a white one?

I was surprised to learn that I’d retained that doubt—that small sense that we were a little bit less than. One of the lasting legacies of both colonization and racial oppression is how they truly made the colonized and the oppressed believe that they were inferior.

We all have some ideas that are engraved in us, these judgments and falsehoods that hold us back. So as we’re recognizing the damage done by these false heroes, may we think of this beautiful Native American man who put his life on the line to carve out what was engraved. May we also identify the damaging monuments we carry inside us—and begin dismantling those too.

– Sister Peace