amc tierra y libertad "transcending historical trauma: black/land project"

Transcending Historical Trauma a presentation at the 2013 Applied Media Conference

Land Based Historical Trauma:

Southern sharecropping

Land Based Historical Trauma:

Sundown Towns, such as Grosse Pointe, MI

Land Based Historical Trauma :1967 Detroit Riots

Photo by Alvin Quinn, AP

Land Based Historical Trauma:Post-industrial economic and

political disinvestmentFlint, MI

Black/Land Project Theory of Change Narratives can do three things:

Increase Autonomy

Increase Authority

Increase Agency

Our work is grounded in Deci & Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory

Autonomy Authority/ Competence

Agency/ Relatedness

Engage on their own terms in conversations about land use, environmental justice, sustainable economic prosperity, democratic civic engagement and relationship to place.

Acknowledge and transcend effects of historical trauma on relationships to land, place and community.

Offer authentic cultural models for regeneration of land, reinvestment in place and cultivating resilience as resistance to oppression.

Artists Reframing Land-Based Trauma in Detroit:Intergenerational interview

Betty Evans, Monica Blaire White, Vera Smith

Hallmarks of Historical Trauma

Survivor guilt

Fixation on past trauma

Hypervigilance about repeated exploitation

Loyalty to ancestral suffering

Transcending Historical Trauma

Confront the Trauma

Reframe the Trauma

Take action that is not in response to the trauma

Transcending Historical Trauma :Reframing agriculture as practice of African heritage

Transcending Historical Trauma :

Confronting historical traumaand taking action through kinship basedland ownership

Walter L. Whidbee, Sr.Flint, MI

Transcending Historical Trauma :Mr. Whidbee’s block

Damon Street, Flint, MI

The Black/Land Project

BlackLandProject.orgContactUs@BlackLandProject.org

Twitter: @BlackLandProj