Asking Better, Harder Questions (Part 1)

Dear Reader: This article is the first in a series I plan to write where I explore how my relationships to people, places, and things are directly shaped, informed, and directed by my colonialist conditioning, which includes white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and the other great lies that are hellbent on divorcing us from ourselves, each other, and the natural world. This is all from my personal experience as an anti-racist, anti-fascist, abolitionist white bodied / passing queer transgender witch in recovery raised in the South.

Milo sitting on a stone wall in Ireland in 2024.

Consider this an invitation into my process of exploring and reclaiming my own humanity and power-from-within before it's too late. I include frank admissions about the “(inner? / outer?) critic” who shows up in my mind, the emotions and sensations that show up in my body, and my heart-centered practices that help me turn again and again from judgment to curiosity so I can move through exploration to understanding to accountable action.

Whoever you are, wherever you are in your own journey, I hope that some of this resonates for you and supports your work toward your own and our collective liberation. Freeing our hearts, bodies, and minds is hard in the best of times, and these are dangerously tyrannical times. Let's do it together. In gratitude and solidarity, Milo

PICK A STARTING PLACE, ANY ONE WILL DO

Our world and everything in it today is molded in the likeness of colonialism. This is an often-used word but we don't always pause to consider its meaning. A basic definition is this:

The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over land, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

Folded in here implicitly are many other important concepts, including (but not limited to):

• IMPERIALISM (policy or practice of expanding a country's power and influence, often through force or coercion)

• LAND THEFT (asserting privatization of land and Right of Conquer principles)

• HEGEMONY (establishing one's own culture as superior to the point of excluding, criminalizing, or erasing all alternatives)

• FORCED DISPLACEMENT (violent removal of peoples from their homeland)

• GENOCIDE (violent subjugation, forced assimilation, and/or mass killings of entire peoples who occupy desirable land), and

• DEHUMANIZATION (stripping human beings of their autonomy, personal power, agency, dignity, and inherent value -- which applies both to people who are subjugated and also those who are encouraged to do the subjugating)

• RESOURCE EXPLOITATION AND EXTRACTION (pillaging of natural resources for economic gain for an elite few at the expense of the environment and local peoples)

That's a lot. And we haven't even touched on white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, or capitalism yet.

And yet, colonialism and all its many tools and weapons are at the heart of much of what is rotten and festering about our current society. Project 2025 -- the infamous blueprint for right-wing white Christian nationalist extremism that Trump definitely didn't know anything about but is enacting line by line -- is the age-old colonialist agenda for the modern age. If we even hope to shape a different future for ourselves so we must investigate it -- as a whole, in its many parts, and how we behave in ways that sustain or resist it.

So, how do we even start with such an overwhelmingly big topic?

Anywhere.

Colonialism literally touches everything in our bodies, minds, lives, systems, and world. Wherever you decide to start, you cannot go wrong.

Just to illustrate, I'm going to share one entry point I stumbled into recently, with the hope that you might be inspired to do the same. I'm also going to share what's challenging about this investigation for me in real-time, so maybe you don't feel so alone if similar things come up for you.

I believe there's H.O.P.E. in Hearing Other Peoples' Experiences -- and I hope this does that for you.

STUMPED BY A BASIC QUESTION

This spring I joined an all-volunteer Reparative Economics Study Hall by and for white bodied / passing people to explore what reparations means to each of us personally as white individuals, to us collectively as white folks committed to imagining and co-creating a more just and fair world, and to us all as a species who require community and repair to heal and survive. 

We were given a long list of questions to ponder over the course of our time together on wide-ranging topics, and to my surprise, the very first question they offered stumped me:

What land do you feel connected to and want to learn more about?

Following this question were others about investigating which Indigenous peoples were on that land before me or my white family arrived and what their lives were like before colonization, and when people of African descent arrived to that land and under what circumstances and conditions, what my family’s relationships were to these peoples and practices of subjugation, and how my family benefited from their respective exploitation, segregation, and removal. These seemingly more challenging questions I am readily curious about and emotionally prepared to explore.

So imagine my surprise when I couldn’t easily breeze through the first question to get to the others. 

And immediately I could hear the (inner? outer?) critic shaking their head at me:

“Milo, that is such a typical white-person thing to do – getting caught up on an easy question about what land to consider in order to avoid the harder and more painful questions related to you and your white family.”

Framed as a hesitation, I’d agree that it’s potentially problematic behavior. It’s certainly something I’d at least reflect back to white folks I coach who find themselves caught on this initial question, too, offering them something like, “The assignment is to pick a place and then explore challenging truths about your relationship to that place. Tell me more about what feelings and sensations you notice coming up for you around that? What are other times in your life when you felt similar feelings and sensations came up for you?” In other words (and a round about way that helps them reach this conclusion themselves): You need to jump into the deep end no matter what, just pick a diving board and do the damn thing!

But there’s another way to frame this, and it begs a better and harder question beneath the simple one that I actually think is really important: 

What is my relationship to land, if any at all?

Land vs land: NAMING, BEING WITH & EXPLORING MY CONDITIONING

The Land (with a capital “L”) – as it has come to mean for me in only the past 15 years or so of my life – means the earth beneath our feet and all that springs up around us in the forms of green-bloods (plants), red-bloods and blue-bloods (all the other animals), grey-bloods and brown-bloods (the rocks and soil), the waters that sustain all living things on this planet, the environment that holds it all through seasons of weather and time, the position of Sun, Moon, and stars above that map out the mythos, fables, and family stories of the particular peoples who inhabit and live into a given place, and all the spirits that live, thrive, quarrel, interlope and intercede within and in between.

In short, the Land is a meaningful, dynamic, reciprocal, transformative relationship of many, many things existing both within and beyond any given place and time.

This idea of Land echoes some of the oldest, most ancient understandings of the All and humans' relationship to it, and is also captured in the modern posthumanist philosophy that decenters human beings and human-centered views as the alpha and omega of all experience, knowledge, and wisdom, instead emphasizing the interconnectedness and co-evolution of all things of which humans are but a part.

Like many white bodied / passing people, I was not raised to understand Land this way. 

If anything, I was raised to understand land (with a lower-case “l”) as an inert thing to be treaded on, driven or biked over, moved out of the way, built on top of, molded and shaped for my own designs. From a very young age, land was marketed to me as a valuable asset to be obtained and protected, a resource to be exploited and extracted, or a burdensome nuisance to be endured – nothing more.

This “relationship” – if it can be called that at all – is all about me and meeting my needs for the duration of my immediate proximity to land, with little to no consideration for what the (L)and cares about, wants, or needs from me.

In other words, my relationship with land has always been purely transactional – what can I get from the land I am on right now and for as long as I am here?

In romantic contexts, this kind of one-sided relationship, where one party pours themselves out to someone they love in a way that is not reciprocated, can be described at best as “unrequited love” and at worst “abusive”. 

In legal contracts, this kind of one-sided agreement where one party involved is not obligated in any way while the other party bears the entire responsibility to act is referred to as “lacking in consideration”.

All of this feels painfully accurate for me in this musing...

So, now I have a starting place to describe my relationship to land: 

The way I was conditioned as a white person to relate to land is self-centered, non-reciprocal, and lacks consideration for anyone or anything else other than me in a way that is purely transactional and ultimately abusive.

Yeesh. I’m going to pause here, let that really sink in...

In this intentional pause, I am immediately hearing the (inner? outer?) critic again, screaming this time:

“But but but what about…”, filling in the blank with all the places in nature I’ve ever visited and loved, the reuse / restore / recycle programs I’ve participated in since childhood, even the sheep farm I operated in Upstate New York using permaculture practices designed specifically to support the land’s health and wellness now and for generations to come.

I am pausing long enough now to let those agonized bouts of denial and defensiveness subside before continuing. Though they may be true, their prominence and volume tells me that I’m onto something important here, something I’m wanting to avoid, hide, and protect within myself. 

So another brief pause, a deep breath, and then I let myself continue…

Ok. Let's keep going. More, better, harder questions:

Given my conditioning, what does it mean for me to “feel connected to” any (L)and, if it’s possible at all? 

For this, it helps to explore whether and how I feel connected to other entities with whom I have largely or entirely transactional relationships. 

Like, do I feel connected to my bank, or the stores where I usually shop, or the auto shop that changes the oil in my car? Do I feel connected to the schools I paid to attend or to an employer who pays me for my labors? 

If I answer “yes” to any of these, where does my sense of connection stem from, and is it dependent on anything – meaning, if certain conditions change, will I feel gradually or immediately disconnected, or will my sense of connection endure unconditionally?

When I explore these questions, it’s easy for me to see that any sense of feeling connection in these other transactional relationships is almost entirely dependent on a combination of the following:

• Their utility – what can they do for me / what can I extract from them

• Their reliability – whether I can come to trust they will be there for me when I need them

• Their proximity – how convenient are they / are they willing to come to me if they are too far away

• Their cost – do I feel like I am still “winning” in this relationship even if it costs me money, emotional labor, etc. to participate in it

• Their values – whether we are aligned in the things we say we care about, or at least that we are not explicitly misaligned (ignorance is bliss, so I will do business with them until they are obviously no longer aligned with my values in a way that I can no longer ignore or can no longer bear the shame of people judging me for trying to ignore it)

• Their desirability via scarcity and exclusivity – what I call “capitalist prowess” – how successful are they in fabricating a sense of family or “tribe” that sets its own branded culture and ethos, a sense of scarcity and urgency about needing to join while supplies last, welcomes me and reaffirms my membership and sense of belonging in something unique and special, while also remaining somewhat elusive and somehow exclusive toward anyone who doesn’t belong

Does anything about that list of criteria remind you of something? To me, it all directly echoes the tools and weapons of colonization listed at the top of this post!

And you know what’s really devastating? Now that I’ve written it all out, if I’m being really honest with myself (which, I am in fact, trying to do), I can say that these criteria feel true for many if not most relationships I have experienced in my life – with businesses, schools, and employers, with communities and individual people, with romantic partners, and yes, with land, too. I'm blown away by the number of seemingly disposable relationships I've been part of where any of us involved could just toss it aside when one or more of those conditions changed and feel perfectly normal and justified in doing so.

So, already I need to adjust my new understanding of my relationship to (L)and, expanding it now to all kinds of transactional relationships I engage in:

The way I was conditioned as a white person to relate to all people, places, things, and land is self-centered, non-reciprocal, and lacks consideration for anyone or anything else other than me in a way that is purely transactional and ultimately abusive.

Yeesh. I’m going to pause again and take a few deep breaths here.

There’s some red hot shame rising up in my chest, catching my breath in my throat, making me want to shrink and hide.

And oh, that (inner? outer?) critic returns, fucking furious this time:

“But not all of your relationships are like this! You have a handful of long-time friends you talk to all the time, communities you have loved and felt genuine belonging in, some family members who care about you even though you’re a radical queer transgender anti-racist anti-fascist witch in recovery…”

That inner / outer critic is so scared – to be judged, to be shamed, to be abandoned by friends who will now think I'm a monster who evidently never really cared about them anyway.

I breathe again, nice and slow until I don't feel my pulse beating behind my ears, pausing long enough to allow more truth to emerge:

Of course not all my relationships are that way. Conditioning is how I’ve been trained to become accustomed to something as normal behavior or to accept certain circumstances as normal, acceptable, and even desirable. 

AND, the good news is that I am capable of thinking, behaving, and loving outside and beyond how I am conditioned to do so. I prove that through my very existence as a radical queer transgender anti-racist anti-fascist witch in recovery in a world that historically seeks my silence and erasure.

Maybe one more slow, deep breath for good measure before going on.

Ok.

So, now that the immediate sensations of unmoored nausea, flushes of shame, flares of anger and resentment are given time to be seen and heard and then subside, here’s what I know in my heart and body: 

The ways I’ve been conditioned all feel like the kind of “wrong-relation” that I don’t want to be a part of, period. I don’t want it to ever be true in my life, but it is.

And, doing the work that I do for a living, I know that this “wrong-relation” conditioning is designed, manufactured, and maintained by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. The fact that all of that is alive and well in me and how I am trained to relate to things and people in every aspect of my life is a deeply disturbing, uncomfortable truth, and one that I have to reckon with before I can choose to do anything differently. It’s a painful but critically important reckoning, one that requires my own individual will and effort as well as community support and accountability.

It is helpful to see and clearly name what I don't want, but I also need to practice naming what I do want so I can start gathering what I need to manifest it. Here it goes:

I desire relationships that are something closer to what feels like “right-relation” – somehow more meaningful, radically honest and earnest, freely joyous and pleasurable, awe-filled, reciprocal, reparative, generative, sustainable. 

Admitting I have this problem (again and again and again) is a first step, and naming what I desire that's different is a lofty milestone I can orient towards (versus a goal or endpoint, since this work is infinitely spiralic in nature and is likely without end).

There are myriad and maybe infinite steps I can take next, none of which I can even hope to fathom without this first one. I'm glad you're here taking them with me.

In the posts that follow, I’ll explore this further and further through some more, better, harder questions, like:

• How, specifically, has white settler colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism shaped my relationship to (L)and? Where can we look to other sources of wisdom to compare and contrast what feels normal, natural, and neutral to me and others in our particular hegemonic scheme?
  

• What, if any, is my relationship to the (L)and in southeast Texas where I was born and grew up in with my white family, and how has it emerged and changed over time? What needs holding and healing there -- within myself, in my relationship to the Land, and in my relationship to peoples and other beings harmed by the colonialist norms that directly benefited me and made me who I am today?
  

• What (L)ands do feel significant, important, or impactful to me today, and why? Is it possible to experience that sense of significance, importance, and impactfulness with other and all (L)ands? 

Have other better, harder questions I ought to consider? Please let me know! Email us at info@justrootsconsulting.com with suggestions, the questions you're grappling with yourself, or how any of this article resonated for you.

More soon. Be safe and joyous in the meantime.

In gratitude and solidarity,

Milo