Unveiling the Layers of Supremacy Culture: A Decolonial Lens

This is a vital part of Inspire’s Breathwork Training and a key exploration of creating a decolonial lens. Part of the beginnings of bringing a linguistic framework to decolonial healing, is to first understand why it is important and why it has been so overlooked.

The history and and construct of race and racism is a mutually co-arising construct, meaning that we are all trapped by the culture we are in, the culture we are taught and the culture we inhabit while simultaneously perpetuating the trap.

We started this journey with our own personal understanding of safety, so let us start to understand how our culture has created safety.

Within our dominant, western culture, the ways in which safety is created is through control and domination of people, things, ideas, land and living beings. This month we will look at the characteristics of supremacy culture through the ways in which they create perceived safety.

White supremacy culture in this sense, is not about white people, it is about the culture we have been seduced, induced and reduced by. It is not about making ways towards division, but a way for us to understand how we continually perpetuate a culture that traps us all, and how to start dismantling it.

There are a few basic assumptions we need to start with, the first is that there is no neutral and we will not be neutralised. We live in a toxic environment, and the sooner we remember that, the better. This society actively dictates who gets to be healthy and who doesn't. We are not trying to return to any preconceive idea of peace for there was none, we have to actively co-create it, co-imagine it into being and this starts with embodiment.

Decolonial healing and addressing supremacy culture asks us to notice what our capacities are when we are discussing it, inviting us to stay within our realms of capacity while moving towards edge. It is important to know and practice that.

As we come together we are creating culture - always leaning in, creating new ways to be together in discourse, in conflict, in friction, in rage - slowly fumbling through mistake by mistake.

*White supremacy is not the shark, it is the water -* Guante

-and no-one is inoculated from it and no one is protected. Supremacy culture is happening here, in all areas of work, family, social life and healing spaces - it is not over there and it is not an ‘if’ - it is always a ‘how’.

So, if dominant culture can be understood as the water, then we can also assume that it is invisible. We are currently living in somebody else's imagination of how society should be and we have unfortunately embodied the characteristics they believe we should have or have created systems for us to survive those characteristics - eg: trauma.

This has become a diagram I lean on often, it is a diagram from Dr. Rupa Marya and her work ‘Inflamed’ - Dr. Marya is a physician and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California.

“To understand the root causes of the pathologies we see today, which impact all of us but affect Brown, Black and Poor people more intensely, we have to examine the foundations of this society which began with COLONISATION…. Colonisation was the way the extractive economic system of Capitalism came to this land (Ed.Turtle Island, US), supported by systems of supremacy and domination which are a necessary part to keep wealth and power accumulated in the hands of the colonisers and ultimately their financiers.” — Dr. Rupa Marya

So what are the characteristics of Colonisation and How have we internalised it?

I am sure at some point in your lifetime you are able to place visceral embodied anecdotes to all parts of the diagram above. This reductionist view of life is in direct odds with our innate and indigenous worldview that honours the land and all that lives and breathes.

As you look at the diagram, what are some of the characteristics that come up for you? How do the values of capitalism show up in your life? How do the values of patriarchy show up in your life? What are the values you have been taught present in the communities you live in?

If it present in the social body, it is present in our body. - Dr. Rev Angel Kyodo Williams **

Please take your time and reflect what comes up for you as your start your reflection. Notice what is happening in the body, what resistance and challenges, what parts are landing and which parts are not?

Upon reflection, I share with you another resource: white supremacy culture characteristics from Tema Okun here. This is a powerful resource and I invite you to notice all that is coming up for you as your read around.

If you would like to explore this more deeply, I invite you to join us at Inspire’s 2 year Breathwork Training course or, if you do not want to become a practitioner, join The Forest Garden

Sending resilient and rebellious love.