1 Silenced Knowings, Forgotten Springs: Paths to Healing in the Wake of Colonialism 1 Helene Shulman Lorenz and Mary Watkins Abstract We have each been educated in a system that grew out of, and reflects, 500 years of colonialism, and are struggling for awareness in a new era of globalization that leaves increasing numbers of people hungry and disenfranchised. Our cultural legacy is profoundly imprinted by the often silenced after-effects of the genocidal war against Native Americans, the dislocation and forced slavery of Africans in America, and the oppressive labor conditions of the poor. But how do we carry these kinds of knowing inside ourselves and in our relations to others and the world? When the dictionary describes colonialism as "the practice or manner of things colonial," what does this mean personally, psychologically and culturally? How has colonialism left its wounding imprint on our individual psyches, on the ways we imagine and interpret our life experiences? What are the paths to awareness and healing of these wounds? Our very means of trying to understand ourselves--the discipline of psychology--arose as colonialism was stretching to its fullest reach. Psychology's development in the last 100 years coincides with the rise of national liberation movements and the ending of the colonial era. While it often recorded psychological effects of colonialism, it hardly ever understood them in the context of colonialism. We must begin to inquire how colonialism has effected our ways of theorizing about and working with individuals and groups. What kinds of suffering have we learned to avoid knowing in ourselves and others because they are so widespread we have learned to accept them as normal and natural? How have we learned to silence not only many of our own feelings and insights, but also the wellsprings of imagination that have the potential to create alternative visions? In this paper we hope to clarify what some of the psychic corollaries of colonialism are and what some of the psychological methods are that can address the suffering that issues from them. Through the provision of small group exercises we hope to quicken an experiential sense of how our silenced knowings are linked to dynamics of oppression; how what we experience as most personal and intimate reflect culture and connect us to work in the world where individual development and cultural liberation coincide. Silenced Knowings Many silenced knowings can exist within apparently ordinary lives and communities, the lives of others and our own lives. By silenced knowings we mean understandings that we each 1 This paper was written for the annual conference of the National Training Laboratory, Bethel, Maine, July 20, 2001. The authors may be contacted at Pacifica Graduate Institute, 249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria, CA 93013 E-mail addresses: helene_lorenz@pacifica.edu mary_watkins@pacifica.edu