This is a process of decolonization. Whether you are the descendants of colonizers or the colonized—or, like me, both—all of our peoples have experienced the loss of something essential to our liberated well-being. Whether that was taken from you or given away in the bargain to win power, it is loss.

Imagination is one of the spoils of colonization, which in many ways is claiming who gets to imagine the future for a given geography. Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma. Reclaiming the right to dream the future, strengthening the muscle to imagine together as Black people, is a revolutionary decolonizing activity.

Epistemicide is at the heart of colonization, but we cannot decolonize our minds by unknowing modernity. Like it or not, your belonging is dependent on a reclamation of the dismissed ancient and a reconciliation with the dominant modern.