It matters that we do this
Storytelling as a practice of honoring our selves, our histories, and our interconnections
What follows is part one of a 4-part storytelling series by Alexis Flanagan.
1830
The Muskogee Creek people were being rounded up and forced from their land at gunpoint by government forces after U.S. President Andrew Jackson unlawfully signed the Indian Removal Act to force southeastern Indigenous peoples to “the West.”
1840
An Irish planter and a recent settler to Georgia raped a Virginia-born woman whom he was enslaving and forcing to labor on this stolen land, where he was building wealth and security for himself and his family.
1841
A child is born as a result of that rape.
This is that child (pictured), Richard Flanagan, my great, great, great grandfather.
During his enslavement with my great, great, great grandmother, Charity Sullivan, they had 3 children — including my great, great grandfather, Fields Flanagan.
1864
Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified by the Senate, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Richard Flanagan and Charity Sullivan would have 8 more children after slavery ended, born free.
Our histories, our lives, our peoples and experiences are interconnected and influenced by one another in ways we can see more clearly when we tell our stories.
Gathering to share stories, whether across town, across countries or in Zoom rooms, connects places and peoples — from our ancestral homes to places of chosen and forced migration, places of all our experiences of love and care, heartache and pain.
Today I am held and sustained on Nacotchtank (or Anacostan) land. A practice of honoring the first peoples of a place, and the land, water, rocks, trees, animals and all the relatives that have known a place as home is part of a particular worldview — a perspective that sees and values these relationships and asks us to acknowledge the whole truth of a place, its history and our participation in that history.
It matters that we do this.
This piece is part one of a 4-part storytelling series by Alexis Flanagan. To read part 2, please click here.
