Dear Re-Calling our Ancestors participant,
Thank you for taking these next steps toward your own wholeness, and towards healing, justice, and liberation in your community. We are looking forward to working with you.
To support our work together, we are sharing a document called the Appropriate Usage Agreement. This document, adapted from Fierce Allies, seeks to establish clarity around how and in what circumstances you’re welcome to use the tools offered in our work together moving forward, and where you are not welcome to.
When I was first introduced to this tool, I was immediately put off. As someone deeply aware of problematic aspects of “private property” and “intellectual property,” and whose life mission includes working to dismantle these systems, I was hesitant to engage in anything that smacked of “ownership.”
Since then, I have come to deeply respect the gifts this tool provides, for me and for my relationships. Some of these gifts include:
Confidence that I am honoring my agreements with my teachers, and their expectations of me, even when this feels awkward;
Unlearning patterns of cultural appropriation ubiquitous in the communities from which I come;
Practicing active relational alignment with the lineages of the tools I incorporate into my work, and those with whom I share these tools;
Practicing clear communication and boundaries.
We hope that as you engage with this tool, similar gifts come forward for you, and we look forward to hearing about it and being in active discussion with you.
In honor of my Quaker ancestors who would not sign legal documents or swear oaths because that implied that there were times when one doesn’t honor their word, and Quakers are expected to always speak the truth, we do not ask for you to sign this document. We do, however, ask for an acknowledgement that you have read and reviewed it, and agree to its terms.
By weaving in this ancestral practice I am deviating from the practice of J. Miakoda Taylor, the person who shared this Appropriate Usage tool with me along with a number of other practices I incorporate into my work and may share with you. I have asked Miakoda, a person of Black and Indigenous ancestry, to trust in my trust in you, despite their understandable, expressed absence of trust in white bodied people specifically, and people steeped in capitalist culture in general. In turn, We ask for you to take to heart the trust in your integrity we’re extending, and the opportunities and/or risk resulting from your choices on myself, Miakoda, and our relationship.
In partnership,
Darcy Ottey for the Re-Calling our Ancestors team