Rooted Environmentalisms

Kabisha Velauthapillai

Listen to this reading...

I am learning to unlearn the importance
of la tulipe and the jonquille and the chêne.
The first names of the flowers
and the tree
that were taught to me
in first grade.
These are flowers that grow
on the other side
of white picket fences, seen.
These are trees that you pass by everyday, seen.
That's what I learned them to be, aesthetics.
Flowers and trees whose blooms or leaves
you tuck away in the white pages
of your schoolbooks.
These are the flowers and trees that remain 
an embedded memorization,
but they are not part of my memories.
They do not hold a place in my stories,
our stories.
I am learning to unlearn the whiteness
that taints our relationships
with the more-than-human.
The living, breathing,
gasping-for-air environments
that envelop us.

I am learning to unlearn
how common spheres of Tamil culture
taught me to interact with my environments,
where young, feminine children
were not supposed to
play outside, with the earth.
Flowers were for our hair,
trees were not for climbing or hugging
or growing,
and animals were watched
but not considered friends,
the more-than-human friends.
I am learning to unlearn
many of these divisions,
by slowly learning to undo the knots
of colonization.
I am rooting my environmentalism
in justice
for Indigenous communities, 
where their ways of knowing 
and their teachings 
are emphasized, 
where their self-determination 
is prioritized. 

I am learning
that my rooted environmentalism
is embedded in a soil
rich with stories and people.
I remember a series of stories
told to me by elder Tamil women.
They told me, that back ‘home’,
every bit of the பனை மரம் was used,
with fruits that held nectar far sweeter 
than any chocolate they have tasted here,
and with dried leaves weaved
to make fences and baskets.
The many flowers they named,
names my memory has let slip.
But these flowers were
the centerpiece in stories of healing,
the same stories they told,
my mother has told.
These are stories where families gathered,
being part of the more-than-human
that surrounded them.
These are not the same stories
I heard in my elementary school classes,
where the flowers and trees were,
just watched,
on the other side
of white picket fences.

This is where I start my story.
Back at the beginning,
where I root all my stories:
within my parents, grandparents,
and the people who came before them,
and the roots we are all attached to.
Their stories, our stories,
cross many lands, borders, and oceans,
These stories are where and why I started
learning to re-learn 
another environmentalism.
I ground my story and its roots,
My environment and environmentalism is tailored 
for me, my family, and my communities.
in an environment and environmentalism
that is tailored
for me, my family, and my communities
that centers within it, justice.

I am learning that caring for the world around us
is not simply by and for white folks,
by and for rich folks.
I am learning that racialized, diaspora communities,
who have complex,
beautiful, and fraught
ties with our many lands, waters, and peoples
must grow
our environmentalisms from within,
from the ground-up.

Air pollution in our every-day environments,
climate change impacting our homeland and
Turtle Island,
military occupation of Tamil lands and continued displacement
of Tamil individuals and families,
settler-colonialism,
are part of my
environmentalism.
I am learning to refuse the environmentalism
taught to me by people and systems
that ask me, that force me,
into an environmentalism
that was not made for me.
I am learning to build my environmentalism,
from within,
for me, my family, the communities I am part of.
As I walk toward the future, in the present,
I want to weave a story and commit to actions that align with who I am
and the collectives I am part of.

About Kabisha Velauthapillai

Kabisha wants current and future generations to reflect on our complex and intertwined relationships with the environments around us. They’re a firm proponent of recognizing that we are inextricably part of the Ilankai lands as well as the lands we may be physically present on, at the current time. Kabisha want us to reflect on our environments as weaved into our stories and our existence. They want us to make time for our parents’ and relatives’ and community members’ stories about the trees whose leaves made us baskets for the puttu that our parents had eaten in Ilankai. Kabisha wants us to re-orient our perspectives of the lands we have now settled on, during and post-war, prioritizing solidarity with Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems of the human and more-than-human worlds that envelop us. This is a future Kabisha is working toward."

Check out their website and research on environmental concerns and conceptions of the Ilankai Tamil community in Montreal (in English and in Tamil): https://soolalenvironment3.wixsite.com/soolal/research. 

Twitter: @Kabisha2