Culture and Tradition are Key to Agricultural Development

Culture and Tradition are Key to Agricultural Development

Copyright 2017 Kentake Malopenza

"You measure a people's potential for liberation based on how different their culture is from their oppressors." 

~Amilcar Cabral

The root cause of trauma and sickness comes from ones commitment to defending a culture that is not their OWN. Living a foreign and alien culture while you despise and condemn your own is simply MENTACIDE (mental insanity). We have been running away from the truth for so long that many of us now think the lies we have been telling ourselves are actually true. But any philosophy that teaches a nation of people to reject their own ancestors and heritage in favor of those who oppress them is a mindset that will surely destroy them and their future generations. We can look at our global Afurakan nations today, all over the world, from the Continent to the Caribbean as well as South and Central America, and we will see that we share a similar lifestyle, culture and value system. We are also facing the same challenges, conflicts and issues regardless of where we may be in the world, or what language we speak in the country of our residence. This tells us that melanated people are truly one divine family and it is our ignorance of that fact that leaves us as easy targets for others to be able to manipulate and control, both us and our resources.

The greatest wealth we have is our indigenous land and it is interesting as well that the term agriculture, which speaks directly to the cultivation and care for ones' land, has the term culture within it. Agriculture is properly defined as:
The practice of tending and caring for the land is slowly becoming an abandoned way of life because we are on the road to fully embracing westernization and capitalism; we are chasing an unrealistic dream that we ourselves know is not real. Our ancestors passed down many ancient spiritual and social values and principles to us that provide rules and regulations of how we must tend and care for our land, but if we don't have any awareness of what those values are then how can we enforce them? 

Many of these codes of morality and social values of communal responsibility are considered law and order within the traditions of our ancestors. But many of us look down upon our indigenous traditions with disgust and shame, as if those ways of life are useless and un-necessary to us now because we feel we have 'arrived' and we have 'moved up' the ladder of success in the mainstream european world. 

Sounding The Abeng

Many of us accept this and end up unknowingly studying information that has been written by Europeans on our traditions, not even realizing that the information is not authentic. In fact, it is these same people who run to the four corners of the Earth to learn at the feet of our elders while we reject learning from one another because we have ego issues.

Then these same yurugu come back to the west and write books on our culture and traditions with the help and assistance of the elders they learned from and we buy those books not knowing that we are financing our own oppression.

As much as we condemn Europeans for their systematic cultural appropriation, we have to look at our own reflection in the mirror and come to terms with the ways in which we assist and encourage our own oppression, by standing idly as others steal our culture and laugh in our face as they are doing it. All the while we are downgrading ourselves calling our heritage and tradition "archaic", "primitive", "evil", "wicked", "outdated" and "backwards". 

Meanwhile they are running all over the Continent, especially Nigeria and Benin as well as the Caribbean and South America learning and studying everything that we were taught to reject and they are paying millions of dollars for it too.

But yet many of YOU will say that our traditions are archaic and have no value in a modern world. Please also remember that our collective honorable ancestors utilized the power within our "outdated" and "backwards" traditions in order to free us from the bondage of slavery and colonization. Please also don't forget that next time you decide to condemn your ancestors for fighting for you to be free from mental and physical bondage. We must all keep in mind: that which we don't claim as our OWN can easily be stolen from us and given a new name and identity. Then, our children will have been robbed of their heritage, which is happening right now in many parts of the world.

Will we only value our traditions when they are open and welcoming to all other races?  Or after they have been stolen and recreated to suit another image and identity?? And if so what does that say about what we really think of ourselves? There is no greater enemy to us than the sickness of self hatred. We must always remember that. Ase ooo.

"the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products."

Prosperity and wealth have always been tied to land ownership, agriculture and the passing down of ancestral tradition and family heritage for generations. This is the true meaning of success:  people must know how to maintain economic and state power. No one with common sense would willingly abandon the traditions of their own ancestors, knowing that these are tied to their future success and prosperity. So why do Afurakan people do that? Do we lack common sense?

We must remember that the aspects of our cultural heritage that many of us reject and disdain are those parts of our reality that europeans love to study, research, write books and thesis papers on; then, they turn around and claim that they are experts in our culture and sell our own knowledge back to us.

But interestingly enough, the european doesn't think so at all. They desperately want to claim and take full ownership of the parts of our culture, tradition and heritage that they know we are ashamed of because they taught us to reject it and now we follow their orders centuries later with no need for it to be reinforced.

Sista Kentake Malopenza is an Afurakan centered 

advocate, mother, writer and entrepreneur who enjoys doing in depth study and research on ancient Afurakan cosmology, precolonial Caribbean culture, Maroon history. Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions and ancestral philosophies from around the global melanated world. She has travelled extensively from West Afuraka to the Caribbean, in order to reconnect with her heritage and extended family. She is also the founder and director of Akoma Ntoaso Tours which is a grassroots tours incentive that educates people about the Jamaica's indigenous culture and ancestral heritage.
You can contact Akoma Tours at www.akomatours.yolasite.com