There is wisdom to be learned from our ancestors. Sandyha Jha’s book, “Rebels, Despots & Saints: The Ancestors Who Free Us and The Ancestors We Need to Free,” offers a path to learn lessons from our ancestors in order to become better ones for future generations. We all have ancestors whose stories have been muted, altered, or whispered. Ancestors transmit their gifts, cautionary lessons, wisdom, and wounds through us and we can gain insight into ourselves when we know more about them.
DNA tests may offer clues as to who our ancestors were, says Jha, but they do not answer the important questions that we might hope for, such as what were the larger cultural forces in play that influenced our ancestors, and can we learn from them today? It is often assumed that ancestors mean our blood relatives, but those aren't our only ancestors, and may not be our most helpful. Jha introduces other kinds of ancestors such as “cultural” ancestors, those from our spiritual heritage, and “movement” or “landscape” ancestors, the original inhabitants of the land we occupy.
There are romanticized ancestors (she calls them stock story protagonists) who are the ones whose stories are elevated and repeated. We also have embarrassing ancestors who got erased from the family narrative. Then there are also atrocious ancestors, or those who caused harm or participated in awful parts of history.
The ancestors who break our hearts with concealed or altered stories of suffering need to be part of our larger narrative, Jha says. These overlooked ancestors are not recognized or celebrated. Because so many ancestral stories are muted, we lose access to their resources and gifts – including those of the troublemakers, resistors, defiers-of-social-convention, and survivors of harm.
It’s important, she says, to practice counter-storytelling, or telling a fuller story than the stock stories that consolidate power or acceptability for only some folks. The stories of our overlooked ancestors hold a complexity that stock stories cannot – many of our ancestors defy easy categorization and their multidimensional narrative threads have been lost. The practice of counter-storytelling will also help us identify, own, and share our own stories with greater nuance and clarity, and in doing so, more fully utilize our gifts.
Even if we don’t know the full story of our ancestors, or know anything about them, we can still be curious about them and try to put pieces of their narratives together. Recreating a fuller picture of who came before can help us move forward through the challenges we face. This reconstruction process often involves the experience of grief at the recognition of the information that is lost to us.
There is a place to which we are all indigenous. Some of us have been forced away from that place, while others have lost their connection to it through conquest or other social forces.
We can tell stories of our ancestors differently, and how we do that will change the next generation’s relationship to its ancestors. For example, equipping children to recognize how ancestral trauma came to be so that they can respond to it better would be a radical act, says Jha, one that will, in turn, allow our children to be the ancestors that their descendants need.
Jha points out that we want each generation to see what the earlier ones got wrong because we want them to do better.
Within our communities, we ought to pay attention to those voices which have been stifled, both our own ancestors and each other’s. Engaging with our ancestors not only benefits us as individuals, but also strengthens our communities as we awaken to the different gifts that our ancestors can offer.
Jha's book offers questions for reflection upon our own ancestors, ones which I'm currently finding meaningful while driving from Rome and north to the Dolomites, the land of my father's grandparents.
Reflections Offered by Sandhya Jha
What are the stories I’ve heard about the people who came before me?
How was their culture and its values different from the one I live in now?
What stories do I want to know about them, whether or not it is possible to find out?
Are there ancestors I’d like to say something to?
For example: “What was this experience like for you?” “This story has made an impact on me.” “You did this wrong and this is how it impacted others.” Or: “This story about you breaks my heart, and I wish I was there for you.”
What treasures can I take from my ancestors’ cultural background? Take a moment each day for a week to thank them for it.
Who is an ancestor that has embodied a core value of mine? How did my movement ancestors practice that value, and how does that connect to my practices?
What are some rituals, practices, and diversity stories that I can bring to my life and to my community to help me stay connected to my ancestors?
Consider also making a movement genealogy; not of your biological ancestors, but those who have inspired you to live out your values.