aman sium- my name is muhammad but please call me john

N. Wane et al. (eds.), Spirituality, Education & Society, 139–156. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

AMAN SIUM

10. MY NAME IS ‘MOHAMED’, BUT PLEASE CALL ME ‘JOHN’: CANADIAN RACISM, SPIRIT INJURY AND THE RENAMING OF THE INDIGENOUS BODY AS A

RIGHT OF PASSAGE

The black man has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro. That this self division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question. (Fanon, 1967, p. 17)

INTRODUCTION

Today, just as yesterday, we are forced to alter or abandon our Indigenous names. We are told that they are residuals of the “old country” and it is now time to embrace the Eurocentric cultural capital that accompanies Canadian life. Why do we change our names upon arrival to Canada? How can we consider renaming to be a process of de-spiritualization? If names are given to us through ceremony and denote a distinctive spiritual character, then what is lost when we change them? In answering these questions I will draw links between the pressures on Indigenous peoples to assume Anglicized names today, and similar historical accounts as experienced under residential schooling and African enslavement. More broadly, this chapter will use both Anti-Racist and Indigenous Knowledges frameworks to critically explore the naming crisis amongst Indigenous peoples in Canadian classrooms and society; with the term “Indigenous” denoting not just First Nations peoples, but other racialized bodies as well. In an effort to value the knowledge gained through lived experience, I will make use of my own experiences as an Indigenous body to shed light on the intersections of racism, cultural assimilation, renaming, and spirit injury. The next section will provide readers with my personal location, objectives, and key questions in relation to the topic. The sections that follow will begin by outlining the various pressures we encounter to change our names, and the spiritual implications on the individual and community levels. To close the chapter I will use the Tigrinya naming ceremony to exemplify the importance of naming traditions in the African context.

AMAN SIUM

PERSONAL LOCATION AND MOTIVATION FOR WORK

Growing up in Toronto is a tough task for any black youth, in spite of class, faith, sex or gender. We are all faced with the long walk of trying to make sense of our place in Canadian society. My childhood was no different. I was raised on the fringes of two opposing realities, being encouraged by my parents to both embrace my Eritrean identity at home and fighting for my stake in the national identity outside of it. Looking back, even as a child, I noticed the tensions between the two. I felt it in the way white kids laughed at me for packing injera for lunch: a stew-based dish indigenous to the Horn of Africa that is meant to be eaten by hand. Just as I felt it when my mom dropped me off on the first day of my short-lived hockey career, where I was called a “nigger” within half an hour of arriving. These experiences made me feel small and devalued. They made me question my heritage. They introduced me to feelings of embarrassment so sharp that my stomach would turn with nausea. In order to better cope with not fitting in, I allowed parts of my Eritreaness to slip away – piece by piece. Often times, teachers and other students would ridicule and bastardize my name until it morphed into “Armond”. I would not correct them because I thought it sounded slightly more Anglo than my actual name. Instead I felt complimented at the sound of it, relieved by their ease in pronouncing it. More of these contradictions would follow until I developed two distinct Selves, one for home and another for school. The two even had different aspirations, pleasures and characteristics. One was expected to be funnier and more entertaining. The other was more compassionate and generous. Over time my two Selves were perfected, and I had the ability to transition in and out of characters when necessary. By the time I reached junior high my double-life was starting to weigh heavily on my notions of wholeness, integrity and truth. To the point where if I ran into someone I did not remember, I would first figure out whether they knew me as “Aman” or “Armond” before performing for them. W.E.B. Dubois (1994) was one of the first people to speak of this duality of performance in his essay Of Our Spiritual Strivings. In the essay, Dubois makes reference to his theory of “double consciousness“, or the idea that blacks who live in the white world (in his case America) are constantly negotiating two distinct selves. The first Self is informed by a black experience that views blackness as a source of pride, history, and ontological validity. Within this understanding, the black soul is able to view itself for what it is. The point of conflict comes from a second more contradictory view of the black Self. It is the curse of “second sight” that allows blacks the ability to view themselves in and through the white world’s racist construction of them, resulting in trauma and self loathing. Within this understanding, blacks take on the racist stereotypes that position them as primitive objects in relation to white modernity, rationality and subjecthood. This idea would later be expanded upon by Fanon and, to some degree, Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow spirit. In recent years, Dubois has provided me a language to make sense of my previous experiences. When I transitioned in and out of my performative roles (as represented by my two names), I lost touch with my authentic Self. I became frightened of the pressures to perform these roles to perfection. Those feelings of

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RENAMING OF THE INDIGENOUS BODY

fright eventually evolved into more dangerous feelings of anxiety. As Dubois (1994) explains it, for blacks who experience this, their quest becomes to settle their spirit, and “to merge [their] double self into a better and truer self” (p.5). Dubois analogized the process of settling our spirit as seeing beyond the veil; with the veil representing the totalizing nature of European cultural hegemony, and the historical attempt by whites to prevent us from seeing beyond it. It would only be during my high school years that I cultivated a sense of pride in my Eritreaness. Ironically enough, it was through the continued brunt of racism that I found the strength to fight back, finally being able to see through the mirage of Canadian integration that I had been chasing for so long. Today, I no longer desire to take part in celebrating an identity that, on one hand, asks me to shed my color for a Canadianess that professes to see beyond race and, on the other hand, uses my color as a marker to detect and oppress me. Coming to this realization, I now view my previous double consciousness as a sort of cultural schizophrenia, no doubt caused by the pains of Canadian racism and “colonial subjugation” as Fanon (1967) put it. In recalling such painful memories, I also wonder how spirituality and indigeneity fits into all of this. What kinds of spirit injuries were inflicted as a result of my renamed and divided Self? How did my spirit recover from the constant denials of my indigeneity? Or is it even possible to fully heal these wounds? More than anything I now realize the significance of naming in regards to spiritual identity. The ways in which we choose to name and identify ourselves often require incredible courage, spiritual strength, and recognition of how these identifications are politicized. Some may think that our authentic Self is something that is guarded and personal but I have come to believe that it is not. As African people, our spiritual core is under question and attack by imposing cultures that seek to deny, omit and disfigure it, those who want us to believe in its ugliness. Over the years I have met other racialized peoples who share in my experience, who were also forced to shed their Indigenous names in the name of integration. Although I have a particular interest in understanding the effects of renaming on the African spirit, it is important to acknowledge the similar ways in which racialized Canadians are told we do not belong.

UNDERSTANDING THE PRESSURES OFASSIMILATION AND RENAMING

For many Indigenous people like myself, whose families immigrated to Canada within recent generations, the adoption of an Anglo-friendly name is the first step in their submission to European cultural hegemony. Sometimes it is a matter of simply translating one’s Biblical name to its Anglicized pronunciation. Other times one selects an Anglo name with no relation or historical resonance with their own culture. I have personally witnessed the abrupt transformation. Within months of arriving “Davindra” becomes “David”, “Mengistu” becomes “Mike”, “Shilpy” becomes “Sheila” and “Jien Shen” becomes “Jimmy”. In attempts to distance ourselves from our Indigenous histories and cultures, we seek out names that hide the obviousness of our Otherness.

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The act of renaming should be regarded as a negation of our heritage, a decisive denial of who we were up to that point of departure. In the words of Arnold Itwaru, a Toronto-based critic of Canadian racism and national consciousness, when Indigenous peoples immigrate to Canada they face extreme pressures to negate their core values, moral codes, and cultural knowledges. As the foremost marker of their indigeneity, it then becomes necessary to drop their names for new ones. Ksonzek and Itwaru conclude that the Indigenous body’s renaming of itself is symptomatic of:

hostility to yourself, a negation which works to negate you … The negation of you is the destruction of you. It is where you disappear. The assimilated immigrant. In the history of my experience this action of negation, the making of the subordinate subject, was my being torn between love of self and hatred of self, in which disliking me, disrespecting who I thought I was, tended to be stronger. (Ksonzek & Itwaru, 1994, p. 15)

Itwaru’s reflections are heavily influenced by Fred Case’s groundbreaking work around racism and national consciousness. Case studied the relationship between Canadian assimilation practices and the de-indigenization of the immigrant or as Case prefers to term it, “racialized“ body. Upon his own move to Canada in the 1960s the Afro-Guyanese scholar found that “prevailing attitudes force the immigrant to seek acceptance at any price … Individuals change their names, give themselves new origins and cultivate, in a caricatural manner, traits that they associate with Canada” (Case, 1977, p. 57). Simply put, the racialized immigrant transforms their being: mind, body and spirit. At its core, our adoption of European names is an admission of our inferiority in the face of “New World” whiteness, an embarrassed dismissal of our Indigenous heritage as being backward in its difference. For many African newcomers in particular, who are beaten down by the double oppression of anti-Black racism and anti-immigrant sentiments, it is too hard to withstand the pressures to take a “Canadian name”. In other cases, our embrace of European monikers may have occurred in our former countries where we were born (or theologically reborn) with titles of universal familiarity, thanks to centuries of European colonialism, Christian “civilizing” missions and the imperial nature of North American popular culture. Needless to say, one’s renaming is symbolic of the broader assimilation process at work. It is a rite of passage that seeks to alienate the Indigenous body from itself, at the same time redressing it with Eurocentric thinking and aesthetic and setting the course of assimilation towards the valorization of whiteness as the optimum national identity. Whiteness becomes the focal point of national culture and identity, serving as both its innovator and arbiter. Everyone else exists in a cultural periphery. Meanwhile, government and much of white society tell us to be content with our half-caste status; and so I remain not fully African and not quite Canadian, but “African-Canadian”. As a result, we are prevented from laying claim to any sense of wholeness (Case, 1977, p. 18). Frances Henry and Carol Tator elaborate

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that “in the struggle over national identity, the dominant culture is reluctant to include identities of ‘others’ that it has constructed, perpetuated, and used to its advantage” (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 29). In many cases, the political and cultural reality facing Indigenous peoples once they arrive contradicts the multicultural ideals that initially lured them to Canada. I often witnessed this working in a Toronto not-for-profit organization as an employment counselor. I can recount numerous instances where Indigenous clients changed or Anglicized their name appeared on their resume. When I would ask them why they changed it, they explained that appearing white on a resume is the most effective way of securing employment. If they did not hide who they were they would be discriminated against for having an “ethnic” name. When I continued to ask if it was worth changing who they were for the sake of securing employment, they would usually respond along the lines of, “It hurts to deny who I am, but it hurts more to not have a job”. It seems fitting to share a particularly memorable experience. Few years back I was approached by a middle-aged client named Mohammad. Mohammad, who was a foreign-trained engineer from Libya, was applying for survival jobs outside his profession. As a newcomer from Africa, he had long been experiencing extreme occupational racism and was having trouble finding work in his field. He took to cleaning floors in libraries and other cash jobs to make ends meet. Remarkably, just prior to our conversation, Mohammad had interviewed with a successful company to work as an engineer. It was his first opportunity to do so in years. The job paid well and desperately needed the services of a man of his qualification. There was, however, a catch he was not prepared for. The company had cautioned Mohammad that they wanted to avoid clashes in the workplace at all costs. It was made obvious to him that by “clashes” they meant obvious cultural differences. In order to make himself appear more willing to assimilate into the company’s WASPy environment, Mohammed was preparing to legally change his name to “John”. The problem, as he explained it to me, was that although he was likely to land the job his spirit was becoming increasingly disjointed from his environment. As a dedicated Muslim, Mohammad prided himself on the sanctity of his naming. His name was a proud declaration of his faith. The name “Mohammad” is a transliteration of an Arabic name from the root H-M-D (“praise”). It is likely the most widely adopted name in the world and a means of connecting Muslims across different geographies, languages and cultural practices. For Mohammad, it provided a historical rootedness that coupled his spirit to those before him. On the other hand, as an African newcomer struggling to succeed in a hostile environment, he believed renaming to be a logical way to send the right message to employers: I am prepared to hide my faith for work. In the end, Mohammad was not chosen for the position, and although he never changed it legally, he continues to use the name “John” on resumes. Similar to Mohammad, many Indigenous clients have shared with me their fears of being seen as a source of “clash”. Many of them specifically mention their names as reasons for discrimination. Changing their names becomes appealing because it can bring them that much closer to whiteness. The benefit of whiteness, as we often see it, is that it is accustomed to feeling omnipotent through its

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invisibility, to feeling entitled to choose who encircles it, and is privileged to move in and out of those circles as it pleases. There is a “noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others”, where by non-white bodies are seen as remarkably more alien than white ones, who – even when alone in the room full of Others – may still feel entitled to claim space (Ahmed, 2007, p.150). Just as whiteness remains invisible through the normality of its naming (i.e. “Jack”, “Jill”, “Mark”, “Mary”) we are constantly reminded that our names are awkward and hard to pronounce. They are foreign. They are too long. They sound as dirty as we look. They make us spit when we speak them. They make us too visible. According to many committed multiculturalists – those naïve individuals who stand by the failed policy even as it withers on its theoretical death bed – Mohammad’s story is not reflective of the popular immigrant experience. They religiously quote the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1988) to prove their point, claiming that in all its universal tolerance and progression, the historic act makes ample room for inter-cultural differences in the Canadian mosaic. Let us take some time to briefly explore and debunk the myth of multiculturalism. We can start by outlining a clearer understanding of the policy. Henry and Tator define multiculturalism as “an ideology that holds that racial, cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity is an integral, beneficial, and necessary part of Canadian society and identity” (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 351). This definition sums up how the policy is paraded by government. Ella Shohat provides us with a more on-the-ground understanding. She explains that the ideology “designates official, largely cosmetic government programs… designed to placate the Quebecois, Native Canadians, Blacks, and Asians”(Shohat & Stam, 1994, p. 47). Consequently, multiculturalism becomes a cloak, abused by both government and dominant society to hide the nation’s racist and exclusionary traditions. Mackey points out that such “liberal principles are the very language and conceptual framework through which intolerance and exclusion are enabled, reinforced, defined and defended” (qtd. in Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 30). Canadian neo-liberalism then seeks refuge from such criticisms in its rather utopian language of “equity”, “tolerance” and “diversity”. It tells us that it is okay to keep the names, languages and other cultural reminders of our former homelands. The obvious problem here is that such positivist language focuses on the end rather than means of racial and cultural cooperation. In an ironic cooptation of the language of resistance, equity-focused policies become used to decorate the hallways of institutions that are still racist. Meanwhile, no real structural changes are made to Canadian institutions or social systems. Critical interrogations of white privilege, Euro-Canadian cultural hegemony and other power imbalances are not pursued. While multiculturalist rhetoric floats in an idealistic and largely uncontested theoretical space, there remain very real political pressures on-the-ground for Indigenous peoples to assimilate. Not the least of which being, the changing of our names.

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THE CANADIAN CLASSROOM AS A HISTORICAL SITE OF DE-SPIRITUALIZATION

Most of the literature on spirituality and schooling has been focused on creative ways of integrating spiritual practices with curriculum (Shahjahan, 2006, p.3). It also becomes important to recognize the Canadian school system as a primary site and tool of de-spiritualization. Within our elementary, middle, and high schools, Indigenous youth with non-Anglo names are targeted in humiliation rituals. I can still remember mornings in my grade ten classroom as my teacher read the attendance. Almost every day for the first few weeks of class my name was read with a stutter, raised eyebrow, chuckle or wisecrack about how “exotic” it was. In hindsight, these were clear instances of spirit injury. I was indeed made to feel de-humanized, reduced to an object of curious observation. Of course, how can one be recognized as having a human spirit if they are not first recognized as human? I distinctly recall how my teacher would follow my name with a pause, silently inviting the class to become spectators in my humiliation, isolating my name as the one oddity on a list of Jacks and Jills. My isolation further worked to undermine my citizenship of that space, since my “exotic” name made me a perpetual visitor to the classroom instead of its rightful occupant. No matter how many times I reminded people that I was born in Canada, they still asked, “Where’s that name from?! Where do you really come from?” My name was only indicative of the broader problem. It marked my difference. In this case, difference was seen as a deficiency. Even in the eyes of my teacher I was perceived as coming from a devalued language, culture and worldview. In turn, I was less capable of grasping the ‘gift’ of Western knowledge. If our names are rooted in particular languages and language itself is a host to distinct worldviews, then we must consider attacks on our names as attacks on those same worldviews. As Phillipson (1997) puts it:

Education is a vital site for social and linguistic reproduction, the inculcation of relevant knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and therefore particularly central in processes of linguistic hierarchisation. (p. 238)

It was my placement at the bottom of the classroom hierarchy that paralysed my sense of self, and detracted from my ability to perform in school. This problem was, fundamentally, a question of spiritual well being. If a healthy spirit is characterized by one’s confidence in their abilities then my spiritual health was under duress. My sense of confidence was being displaced by feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, helplessness and a general resentment toward the process of learning. All of which caused me great stress. My stress was then compounded each day by the fact that teachers did not seem to notice or care. Instead I suffered in silence, trying hard to hide my wounded spirit from others. Not wanting to be a burden. Not wanting to show my classmates that I too realized that I was different. It is clear to me now that racism and spirit injury were interlocking with one another. Black students and educators were grossly underrepresented in my school. So when I was pushed to the margins of classroom learning, I found myself alone. During these encounters of racism and spirit injury, when we cannot see ourselves reflected in those around us, we become self aware of our being. The former

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ultimately effects the latter. If racism was the cause of my problem then spirit injury was its consequence. And yet, the creative power of black spirituality is that it finds ways to prevent, resist and overcome spiritual discomfort. We become trained through years of growing up ‘behind enemy lines’ to cope with our discomfort, to smile and laugh in the face of it, and to work and raise families within it. We make a friend out of discomfort. It is a friendship that allows us to sit in a room full of whites and come to terms with our isolation. It is not that we no longer feel its pain or resist it but, rather, we have learned how to navigate it. By high school I found the confidence to navigate my surroundings. I also found the confidence to reaffirm the pronunciation of my name in the face of its mutilation. I did, however, have to deal with a different problem. The constant defending of my name made others view me as a resister. I became troped as the “angry black man” who did not like to have his name mistaken. In the classroom in particular, I faced accusations of being an “ungrateful immigrant” who stubbornly resisted assimilation. The ways in which Indigenous students resist mutilations of their name should not go unnoticed. The frustrated exhaustion of constantly correcting the pronunciation of our names is captured in Katalin Szepesi’s poem, Hello … My Name Is … Longing for it not to happen ONE MORE TIME. And what’s your name? Wrinkled nose, puzzled eyes. I must repeat. Spelling not helpful. Nationality then requested to excuse the unintended butchery. Comparing my identity to objects and places for the sake of memory Next, considered interesting, different and sometimes pretty. Last name not attempted. Too difficult, not necessary. (Szepesi, 2001, p. 35) The classroom is a location of hazing and trauma for many minoritized bodies. Punjabi feminist Anurita Baines recalls her elementary school environment as the site of her forced assimilation. As a child travelling to Canada from India, her parents adapted her name to prepare her for school. Anurita recalls:

I am enrolled in school and registered as Anne, an anglicized version of my name. This, I am told, will save me from embarrassment in the classroom when my name is called during attendance-taking. (Baines, 1997, p. 28)

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Again in Anurita’s case, we see attendance-taking as a ritualized, communal humiliation tactic. One used by predominantly white educators to remind students of who does and does not belong in public spaces of learning. It was only when she adopted a “normal-sounding” name that Anurita made friends to play with and became more tolerated in the classroom. She reflects on her renaming as a necessary baptism conducted by the Canadian school system. Her experience is not dissimilar from what I experienced in my balancing act between “Aman” and “Armond”, during which time I experienced a severe spiritual stress, one that prevented me from comfortably interacting with others for fear that they would discover my secret. Luis M. Aguiar (2001) calls this the “imposter syndrome”, a feeling of deep psychological anxiety often felt by African students when they are made to feel disconnected from their communities in and outside of school (p. 189). According to Mambo Ama Mazama (2002), the comfort of feeling connected – or the “fundamental unity of all that exists” – is the most important philosophical principle of African spiritualities (p.219). It is necessary for the African spirit to recognize and nurture its interconnectedness to the life forms around it; moving as one cog in a universal whole. The question should then be asked, what happens when the racism of our Canadian classrooms sever the African spirit from its surroundings? Or as Dona Richards (1990) frames the question, “What happens when a people are forced to live (survive) within a culture based on a world view which is oppressive to their ethos?” (p. 209). In such cases we see that the African spirit – much like the African body – becomes isolated. It becomes removed from the common spirit of the school community. At the same time we are taught to feel shame and judgment towards our Indigenous community leading to the “imposter syndrome” that Aguiar speaks of. It may be easier for us to understand the relationship between renaming and spiritual disconnection through Jung’s concept of the shadow spirit. When we assume different names and personas in different spaces our wholeness becomes threatened. He believed our spirit’s shadow side to embody “everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself and yet (which) is always thrusting itself upon him directly or indirectly” (Earl, 2001, p. 285). In cases of renaming we are refusing to acknowledge our indigeneity as represented by our names. We are chasing the mirage of Canadian integration through the becoming of “Armonds” and “Jimmys”, trying hard to segregate or suppress our double-existence as “Aman” and “Jien Shen” in other spaces. What is the cost of splitting our spirit in two? “The inevitable cost … is that the journey to the self involves us in being ‘crucified on the poles of the opposites’” (Earl, 2001, p. 285). In other words, there is a necessary moment in which we need to confront our contradictions en route to understanding our authentic Self. It becomes necessary for us to deal with our shadow side or second sight, to confront the divergence between whom we actually are and who we fantasize being. Some say the shadow side of our spirit is a natural and inevitable existence in oneself. I disagree. The shadow represents our tendency to live our lives dishonestly. As a result, there is a need to constantly interrogate our fears, hatreds

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and insecurities in our pursuit of living a whole, connected and honest life. As Jung puts it, “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” (qtd. In Earl, 2001, p. 285). Although notions of the shadow are steeped in Christian notions of bright/good and dark/evil binaries, the concept is still useful in exploring questions of spiritual dualism. It should also be asked, how do white students experience these classroom humiliation rituals? Do they gain or lose anything in becoming witnesses to the teasing and Othering of our names? Fanonnian analysis becomes useful here: “the feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority” (Fanon, 1967, p. 93). In other words, as we grasp to find ourselves in the spiritual tug-of-war between our shadow and authentic Selves, the white bodies around us are reified as being whole. If our identities and spirits are indeed understood as relational entities, then it can be argued that, through the spiritual confusion of the dominated, the dominant spirit is reaffirmed as being both central and whole. Looking back, I see this relationship in my own experiences. While baring injurious humiliation during attendance-taking, the white bodies around me were reaffirmed as the cultural-spiritual norm. They were made to feel comfortable and connected to the classroom space. In essence, they experienced the same “unity of being” that Mazama speaks of – at my expense. It is necessary to consider such issues of school-based assimilation, renaming and spirit injury in historical terms. Cultural pressures on Indigenous students to rename themselves today are no different than those experienced by First Nations people during residential schooling. Residential schools operated with government backing between the mid 1800s and 1988, reaching a peak in 1931 with over eighty schools across Canada (Crey & Fournier, 1997; Grant, 1996). In more than one hundred years of existence, the schools were assimilation centers to over one third of the country’s First Nations population. White school administrators realized the most effective way to do this was through the de-spiritualization of the Indigenous body, or as Fournier and Crey phrase it, “killing the Indian in the child” (Crey & Fournier, 1997, p. 47). Government and Church united in a common vision for the schools. They were to become factories of cultural transplantation. Resistant, godless “savages” were to go in, and along the conveyer belt of European civilization they would emerge obedient, Christian subjects. It was common practice that “as soon as children entered school, their traditional long hair was shorn or shaved off; they were assigned a number and an English name and warned not to let a word of their language pass their lips” (Crey & Fournier, 1997, p. 57). The prohibiting of Indigenous languages was especially painful for students, since it is through one’s native language that they “come to know, represent, name, and act upon the world” (Wane, 2009, p. 164). To take away one’s name, which has considerable meaning associated with time, space and ancestorship in First Nations cultures, worked to further injure the student’s spirit. Along with arbitrarily selected European names, students were referred to as “six”, “nine”, “forty two” and so forth. The numbering of students only accentuated their sub-human status, while also robbing them of their distinctiveness.

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Baptizing First Nations children with new Biblical names intended to create a spiritual disorientation of sorts, to erase the foremost reminder of the child’s life prior to residential schooling. However, receiving a Christian name did not exempt children from continued tortures. In the eyes of school masters, to rename the Indigenous body was to transform it from subject to object. As objects they were deemed less than human, spiritless vessels that deserved the abuse they received. For example, a clear correlation can be drawn between the renamings and rampant sexual abuse that occurred in residential schools. Former Co-Chair of the B.C. First Nations Summit, Danny Watts, recalls the sadistic combination of sexual exploitation and religious evangelism that was “shoved down his throat” as a child:

Of course he began by praying to the Lord. Then he proceeded to take my pants off, and then his own pants, and he would have an erection, and he’d lay behind me. And simulate sex, and have a climax. It was bad enough that this man was doing this to an eleven-year-old boy. What made it even worse was he used to make me kneel and ask for forgiveness. We’d do this bullshit about, oh Lord we’ve sinned, and please forgive us. What did I do? I was just a young boy being manipulated by this old man. (qtd, in Fournier & Crey, 1997, p. 120)

More than anything Watts describes the blend of spiritual and sexual abuse as “violence to your soul, to have this Christianity shit pushed down your throat, to have to pray before you eat and pray before you go to bed. And pray after some guy is trying to shove his prick up your ass” (Fournier & Crey, 1997, p. 120). Although deeply disturbing, stories like Watts’ should not go unmentioned. Some researchers estimate that roughly 85 percent of the victims, resisters and survivors of residential schools experienced similar torture (Fournier & Crey, 1997). That being said, the culture of spiritual and sexual abuse in residential schools was widely known and resisted by the First Nations. This led many to break free from or dodge school recruitment. As late as 1951, eight out of every twenty First Nations people over the age of five possessed no formal schooling as a result (Graveline, 1998). Of importance here is the fact that it was first necessary to de-humanize and de-spiritualize the Indigenous body before it could be recreated in the image of its colonial creator. As mentioned before, the children’s renaming was central to this de-spiritualization. They needed to first be distanced from the meaningful associations of their Cree, Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, Iroquois, Wyandot etc. names. Names gave them life and spiritual meaning. They were chosen from ancestral places, stories, life forms or spiritual principles representative of the newborn’s character. Amongst the Mi’kmaq in particular – who originate from Canada’s Atlantic Provinces and Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec – an individual’s name holds a sacred knowledge within it that is passed down from the Creator. It is a peaceful knowledge that should not be desecrated or replaced. The Mi’kmaq language as a whole is not to be used for cursing or belligerence. Instead, English is used as the language of aggression and negativity (Joe & Choyce, 1997). We see the same treatment of naming amongst the Tlingit

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people of the Alaskan Pacific coast. The Tlingit naming ceremony is considered a process of ancestral embodiment. Tlingit people choose names that indicate clan affiliation but, more importantly, the chosen name must “represent the inalienable spirit of an ancestor believed to be ‘reincarnate’ in the current owner of the name” (Bunten, 2008, p. 391). In a ceremony that celebrates ancestral revitalization and cultural continuity, the new owner takes on the spiritual personality of their namesake. Much of the new owner’s social formation is developed around this association. When a person abandons their birth name they likewise become stripped of their point of reference. Their knowledge of self becomes blurred. Perhaps most troubling, they are emptied of the distinct historical trajectory and spiritual character that secures their place in relation to the rest of the community.

DIGGING UP OUR ROOTS: TRACING THE RENAMING OF THE OTHER

Outside of the classroom the historical roots of renaming the Other go back much further than residential schooling. It was during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade that African naming systems came under universal attack. It is worth taking some time to briefly discuss the unprecedented nature of this attack. For many African brothers and sisters, family names do not resonate with ancestral traditions but are residuals of colonialism, or worse, brandings forced upon them during enslavement. During the Slave Trade white owners would rarely assign enslaved Africans their own family name, often naming them instead after criteria as arbitrary as skin complexion. This is evidenced by a court document recovered from the Salem Witch Trials in which three Africans stood trial as “Tshituba Tony, John Indian, and Mary Black” (Mphande, 2006, p. 107). Each of these names was meant to correlate to the person’s “race colour”. It should be noted here that naming someone based on their aesthetic alone runs counter to most Indigenous naming systems, in which the internal (spirit) character is believed to be more revealing than the external (body). In other instances, white owners used “slave names” to pay homage to the political leaders of the day. This is why so many African-Americans are still walking around with the markings of “Jefferson”, “Washington”, “Jackson” or “Lincoln”, often oblivious to the fact that they are living tributes to the racist forefathers who proposed, encouraged and legislated their enslavement. It was men like Thomas Jefferson, for example, the so-called “deliverer” of American independence who maintained that “… the blacks … are inferior to the white’s endowments of both body and mind …” (Asante, 1990, p. 119). In yet other instances there were Africans who secretly resisted renaming through the remembrance and transgenerational passing down of Indigenous names. However, they too were frequently forced to adopt Anglo-friendly monikers. Many of whom feared being labeled rebellious because of their resistance to European nomenclature and continued identification with Africa, which was a place deeply feared in the racist white imaginary (Mphande, 2006, p. 108).

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Molefi Asante (2003) maintains that the renaming of the African body during enslavement was an act of spiritual violence and disfiguration. No different than the renamings that occurred in residential schools and, although remarkably less violent, the pressures to rename ourselves in classrooms today. The inhumane buying, selling and trading of African objects was justified through American claims to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. For many whites, owning, raping and torturing slaves were indeed moments of happiness, moments of sadistic ecstasy that sought to consume the African body in different ways. From the perspective of slave owners these things were not happening to living, feeling people but mere objects void of human spirit. Thus, we again see the relationship between renaming, racism and de-humanization. We cannot simply engage the topic of African enslavement as a “removed history” as many white scholars have tried. The fact of the matter is that history is never as removed or static as some would have it, but continues to survive, mutate and influence the present moment. For this reason we need to consider the implications of “slave names” and how they continue to injure African spirits in the present. Asante makes the necessary connection between the historical and present moments. He argues that “slave named” Africans walking the streets today may be physically free but remain in ontological and spiritual enslavement; they remain complicit in the Hegelian myth that Africans had no history prior to enslavement (Asante, 2003, p. 40). He prescribes formerly enslaved Africans of North America to shed their “slave name” in order to reclaim their spirit:

Defined collectively by whites as ‘Negroes’ and identified individually by white names, [the enslaved] were bodies without spirits… I see the choosing of an African name as participatory, inasmuch as it contributes to the total rise to consciousness, which, ultimately, is what real cultural naming and the rise of the African spirit is all about. (Asante, 2003, pp. 38, 40; emphasis added)

I disagree with Asante in his claim that the spirit can be taken away. I prefer to believe the spirit could never be completely transplanted or seized from its body, and thus, we Africans were never “bodies without spirits”. For Africans in North America that hold European names, the adoption of Indigenous names will not help to reclaim something that was lost, but instead decolonize something that was always there.

Many authors have taken seriously the notion that spaces have feelings (Kanneh, 1998). It is now time to extend this notion to include the geographies of cultural memory; or those spiritual practices and symbols that can reconnect displaced bodies to the spaces they were forcefully removed from. No symbol is more crucial to cultural memory than one’s name. It is our names that connect us to physical places, both real and imagined.

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WHAT IS IN A NAME?: EXPLORING THE TIGRINYA NAMING CEREMONY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT WE LOSE BY RENAMING OURSELVES

To properly understand the damage inflicted on the spirit upon its renaming, let us briefly explore the nature of indigenous African naming practices. This way we can make an informed consideration as to what is lost when we disfigure or reject our indigenous names. In traditional African worldviews to rename someone is to negate their existence. It is to disconnect them from the very act of their creation. This tradition is poetically captured in the ancient Kemetic creation story from the city of Memphis, where the creator god Ptah is said to have khepered (created) the worlds many creatures by speaking their names to life. The ancients applied the philosophy of spoken truth to personal names as well. They believed that to speak someone’s name in a respectful manner was to affirm the meaning behind it, and with each affirmation that meaning was brought to life (Shafer, 1991). The tradition of divine utterance and prophetic naming can be found throughout the continent today. From Yoruba Land to Oromia, the Nuers of Sudan to the Zulu Nation, a person’s name holds a spiritual significance often lost in the shallow naming practices of the West (Shafer, 1991). Let me use the example of my own name. “Aman” is a Tigrinya name with historical prevalence in contemporary Eritrea and Ethiopia. It best translates to English as meaning “peace”. The name was given to me to commemorate the unique timing of my birth. My parents brought me into the world in the midst of a revolutionary struggle, during which Eritrean nationalists were fighting to secede from Ethiopia. In the midst of such prolonged violence my parents chose my name as a testament of hope; hope for both a peaceful resolution to the war and the realization of an independent Eritrea. Eritrean people as a whole use naming as a way to prophesize the future. This can be seen in the number of children named “Awet” (victory) during the thirty year revolutionary struggle. According to Tigrinya tradition, when I allowed my name to be disfigured I likewise disfigured the meaning alive within it. It is no wonder then that I was left feeling torn, imbalanced and rather unsettled when people interacted with me as “Armond”. I may have felt the name helped me blend in, but I also felt a certain blankness and meaninglessness, as if my renaming made me devoid of history. It was either coincidence or spiritual prophecy that when I defended the true pronunciation and integrity of my name I once again found myself at peace. In this way, African spiritual worldviews tend to see one’s name as a self-fulfilling prophecy or core truth that needs to be nurtured and awoken. This is why so many Indigenous societies place great emphasis on a child’s naming ceremony. The very moment a child is named will reinvoke the past, commemorate the present, and help define the future. Whether that child grows up to celebrate or deface that name can also have profound implications on their lives. The Tigrinya naming ceremony can span up to twelve days. It is known to Tigrinya people as the Msigar, meaning “transition” or “renewal”. When a child is conceived they are temporarily referred to as “Endu” for a boy and “Hintit” for a

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girl. These are vague names that are used as equivalents for “baby”. For the first twelve days after giving birth both mother and child do not leave the house. It is believed that our names protect us from malicious spirits. If the newborn leaves the house without a name s/he is vulnerable to attack by evil eyes and could die prematurely. Thus, extra precautions are taken by family, friends and community members to protect the newborn until they can collectively decide a name. Part of the baby’s protection includes their continuous bathing and wrapping in blankets. The emphasis on cleanliness is again related to ideas of purity and divine protection. Following days of all-women meetings on the subject and long discussions over boon (coffee ceremony), a name is selected. It is crucial to point out the prominent role that women play in the institution of naming. Prior to the Christianizing of the Tigrinya highlands and the associated spread of patriarchy, women played an exclusive role in the selection of names and mediation between the physical and metaphysical worlds. More contemporarily, the child’s father will select a name that is representative of the ancestor the child most clearly resembles or embodies. Other times a name is chosen based on lands, totems, religious symbols, or in relation to an event that marks the unique timing of their birth. For example, my father’s brother is named Asmalash, meaning the “one who returned a member to the family”. The name was chosen for him because, just prior to his birth, my grandfather had arrived home alive after being conscripted by the colonial regime to fight in Libya during WWII. Until his arrival his family feared he may have perished in the war. Another example would be my friend Mereb, who was named in tribute to the river that historically separated Tigrinya highlanders from their neighbors to the west. At one point in history the river symbolized cross-cultural transformation for those who crossed it. Regardless of which name is chosen, a celebration is sure to follow. The newborn’s mother will be elegantly dressed in her finest nitsella (traditional shawl) and gold crown to match. For the first time in twelve days she will be ushered out of the house to jovial songs of renewal and family continuity, as harmonized by community members. Our names, whatever they may be, are believed to be co-produced by community members who are bounded by principles of collective participation and collective good. During the reemergence of the newborn’s mother after twelve days of rest, her friends and enemies alike attend to celebrate the cycle of life. Many components of the Tigrinya naming ceremonycan be found in the naming practices of other African societies. Asante’s description of the Yoruba naming ceremony is especially haunting in its similarity:

Upon birth, a newborn is sprinkled with water so that he will cry … Girls receive their names six days after they are born and boys are named eight days after birth. During the naming ceremony, the baby is bathed in water, which is then set outside. When family and friends arrive, they … offer suggestions for the infant’s new name. Babies are frequently named according to the circumstances surrounding their birth, or else after a particular deity the villagers worship. (Asante & Nwadiora, 2007, p. 32)

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The common thread in many African naming ceremonies is the importance of patience in selecting a thoughtful and sacred name. In some cases it is one week, two weeks, or even one month before the child is named. Over the years this common thread has been captured in popular fiction. In the opening scene of Alex Haley’s epic novel, Roots, the birth of Kunta Kente is described at length: “By ancient custom, for the next seven days, there was but a single task with which Omoro would seriously occupy himself: the selection of a name for his firstborn son” (Haley, 1974, p. 12). Haley elaborates that in Kunta’s Mauritanian village it was a priority that his name was “rich with history”. It needed to position him in a historical Mandinka narrative that linked his spirit with those of his ancestors in the same Great Story. When we rename ourselves in new environments today, we dislodge ourselves from the Great Story of our ancestors; we lose the titles of familiarity and meaning that connect us to the living, living dead, and the unborn. It is also through our Indigenous names – whether given to us or assumed later in life – that our spirit survives our physical existence. The ritual recital of an ancestor’s name in order to ensure their wellbeing in the afterlife is found in many Indigenous communities today. J.S. Mbiti has noted that, amongst many African peoples, one’s “recognition by name is extremely important. The appearance of the departed, and his being recognized by name, may continue for up to four or five generations, so long as someone is alive who once knew the departed personally by name” (Mbiti, 1989, p.25). When we rename ourselves, we leave this world only to be unrecognizable in the next. We remain out of touch to the descendents that wish to speak our names back to life. We die having turned our back on our authentic Self. Perhaps worst of all, we empty ourselves of the rich philosophical meanings, geographies, symbols, ancestors, and divine principles we were named after.

CONCLUSION

I chose to open this paper with a passage from Black Skin, White Masks because I feel it speaks to my story. It is a passage that I keep on my wall to this day. It serves as an artifact, a reminder of the former Selves who existed before me today, a painful but necessary remembrance of those who were taught to be strangers to themselves. As I mentioned before, my story is not unique. There are countless Indigenous bodies sitting in our classrooms in silent disguise, walking the streets disconnected from their surroundings, and performing their alter egos for the white world on cue. The time has come for us to ask more critical questions, not only about how we choose to name ourselves, but also how we resist assimilation in a Great White North that refuses to make peace with our differences. Seeing that I opened with the words of Frantz Fanon, one of the greatest scholars to delve into identity politics, I thought it would be equally fitting to conclude with the guidance of another giant in my life, my grandmother. Although I never had the opportunity to develop a relationship with my mother’s mother, her teachings are gathered in my mother’s memory. Over the years my mother’s stories of Mamma Biserat have

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painted a picture that is starting to clear. It is a picture of a remarkable woman full of wisdom and spiritual guidance, of a woman who had great pride in her heritage and humbly accepted her place within the ancestral line. In discussing this chapter with my mother, she was reminded of a proverb used by Mamma Biserat. She shared it with me in the hopes that it would illuminate the importance of naming in Tigrinya tradition, and now I am sharing it with the disguised bodies I speak of:

When you name a child, you are filling their cup with the water of life.

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aman sium- my name is muhammad but please call me john

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