Ethnoautobiography
Edition: 2
Copyright: 2018
Pages: 502
Edition: 2
Copyright: 2018
Pages: 502
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$54.68
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$54.68
Telling our personal story is one of the most powerful tools for self-understanding, the integration of information, and critical insight. This unique approach to ethnic studies and the psychology of identity is designed to utilize autobiographical storytelling to facilitate a process of transformative identity politics.
Ethnoautobiography sees Ethnic Studies and the Psychology of Identity as the critical and transdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, border-crossings, migration, and indigeneity. When we study and understand the historical and contemporary entanglements among the different sets of binaries (victim/victimizer; white/person of color; indigenous/settler, for example), what results is a decolonization process that helps students develop a more complex view of their social, cultural, and political lives. Through the use of a storytelling framework that is indigenously grounded, Ethnoautobiography opens up to other sources of power outside of the established categories that are often centered on whiteness, modernity, and colonial thinking. The experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States and the experiences of Indigenous people provide the critical context for the deconstruction of “white consciousness” and the remembrance and envisioning of ways to participate in and create civil societies and participatory democracies that support the survival of our planet for the future.
Ethnoautobiography creates safe educational spaces for all to learn the histories, cultures, and academic traditions of Native Peoples, communities of color in the U.S., and their interactions with dominant settler society. Ethno-autobiographies are used as tools for exploring histories of oppression and discrimination, and in order to develop the necessary courage, creativity, and understanding in overcoming racism and other forms of oppression. Liberation practices addressing social justice issues require both the witnessing and resolution of traumatic histories as well as the deconstruction and contextualization of settler, colonial, and supremacist histories. This process honors the complexities of who we are in a circle of storytelling and inquiry which validate the experiences of all citizens.
List of Riffs
List of Activities
List of Figures and Tables
List of Illustrations
Special Thanks
Ethnoautobiography: A Map to Decolonization and Indigenization by Leny Mendoza Strobel
The Ceremonial Stepping-Stones of Ethnoautobiography by Apela Colorado
Truth Makes Us, But First We Have to Free Truth by Stanley Krippner
Preface by Jurgen Werner Kremer & R Jackson-Paton
Chapter 0: Let’s Have a Conversation
Chapter 1: Who Am I?
Chapter 2: The Self – Now Larger, Now Smaller
Chapter 3: Why Not Simply “Autobiography’?
Chapter 4: Ethnoautobiography Defined
Chapter 5: We Are Moral Beings
Chapter 6: Community and Communitas
Chapter 7: Where Am I? Ethnoautobiography as Gateway to Place
Chapter 8: Connecting Nature, Self and History
Chapter 9: History – Memory and Imagination
Chapter 10: Mythic Stories
Chapter 11: Who Are My Ancestors
Chapter 12: En/gendering Embodied Ethnoautobiography
Chapter 13: Gathering Ourselves through Dreams
Chapter 14: Faith, Spirituality, Skepticism
Chapter 15: To Tell a Story
Chapter 16: Healing Ourselves – Healing Others
Chapter 17: Continuing the Conversation
Appendix: Ethnoautobiography as Research Methodology
Glossary
References
Index
Jürgen W. Kremer received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the Universität Hamburg, Germany. In 1982 Jurgen settled in the San Francisco Bay Area to teach full time and served as dean at Saybrook University and at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His teaching and research interests range from general psychology, clinical psychology and research methods to the relevance of indigenous knowledge for today as well as ethno-autobiography. For four years he co-directed a program for Native American students and others concerned with indigenous roots and origins. Today Jürgen is a tenured faculty member at the Santa Rosa Junior College.
Jürgen has published regularly since 1976, with 150 plus publications to his credit (journal articles, book chapters, books). Most recently he co-edited three volumes on culture, consciousness, and therapy. He published the textbook Psychology in Diversity, Diversity in Psychology – An Integrative Psychology for the 21st Century with Kendall-Hunt. His Ethnoautobiography (with R. Jackson-Paton) is in its second edition with the same publisher. Jürgen has served on several editorial boards and has been an executive editor for ReVision (a journal of consciousness and transformation) since 1994.
River Jackson-Paton is an embodied artist, educator & ethnoautobiographer. His other publications include Restor(y)ing Environmentalism: Decolonizing White Settlers in the United States: (Re)placing Posttraumatic Settler Disorder and ‘Rituals of Inquiry; or Looking for Culture and Truth.’ Current writing includes “Brain injury trans* formations: Neuro-queering post-traumatic settler dis-ease through embodied art & story,” narrating the portals of be/com/ing queer, dis-abled and living with bio-emotional suffering. These experiences embody the both/and of simultaneous dis-ease and trans* formative healing processes. River uses the pronoun “they” as a non-binary trans*gender person and signifying a complex approach to identity. Of mostly Celtic (English, Scottish, Irish & French) ancestry, living on Comanche & Caddo lands in the Arkikosa watershed in Dallas, Texas, River emphasizes embodiment, creativity, relationships with place, race & gender. Current art projects include a “bulk garbage coloring book,” “shadow words,” “cairns,” “knowing portals” & “garbage collection.” River lives with their person, Molly, & a dog named Groot, as well as having several human children and critters from previous relationships.
“Ethnoautobiography has profoundly transformed my classroom—from one riddled with fear and tension arising from facing into questions of race and cultural difference to an extraordinary atmosphere of openness, vulnerability, curiosity, and a new capacity to engage honestly in difficult conversations with others. Semester after semester, I watch the process and methodology of Ethnoautobiography work its wonders in opening up young minds and building a mini-community of folk committed to growth and to becoming socially engaged and ecologically aware. Students often come out of the class remarking that “it’s the best class I’ve ever had in my entire college career,” wishing all their classes could be conducted in the same integrative way, encouraging affective, not just cognitive, communication; full-bodied expression; and comprehensive exploration of historical perspectives.”
S. Lily Mendoza
Associate Professor
Center for Babaylan Studies
Oakland University Director
“The dimensions of Ethnoautobiography represent stepping stones or points of reflection that mirror the workings of our minds and have the capacity to identify distortions in our self and world. Each stepping stone is a teaching. When we hold that teaching before the light of indigenous mind it helps to free ourselves from the torment of being separated from the source of our being, the source of power. It helps us develop the capacity to experience life in all its vitality. In so doing, even just a moment of immersion in this ceremony points the way out of the disaster our rational mind has created by rejecting its ethnoautobiographical grounding.”
Apela Colorado Founder
Worldwide Indigenous Science Network
“The discourse on white privilege always stopped short of offering students a process on how to decolonize European colonial thinking and how to end whiteness. The workbook offers a pathway out of whiteness and white privilege, out of the masterful (but empty) self-constructed by modernity. Students are appreciative of the process that teaches them how to deal with the shadow material of history, how to rediscover their ancestral roots, how to connect with myths, storytelling, dreams, spirituality. As one student said, ‘This process gave me a more expansive sense of self and a more solid ground to stand on. I’m no longer afraid of letting go of my white privilege.’”
Leny Mendoza Strobel
Professor, American Multicultural Studies Department
Sonoma State University
Telling our personal story is one of the most powerful tools for self-understanding, the integration of information, and critical insight. This unique approach to ethnic studies and the psychology of identity is designed to utilize autobiographical storytelling to facilitate a process of transformative identity politics.
Ethnoautobiography sees Ethnic Studies and the Psychology of Identity as the critical and transdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, border-crossings, migration, and indigeneity. When we study and understand the historical and contemporary entanglements among the different sets of binaries (victim/victimizer; white/person of color; indigenous/settler, for example), what results is a decolonization process that helps students develop a more complex view of their social, cultural, and political lives. Through the use of a storytelling framework that is indigenously grounded, Ethnoautobiography opens up to other sources of power outside of the established categories that are often centered on whiteness, modernity, and colonial thinking. The experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States and the experiences of Indigenous people provide the critical context for the deconstruction of “white consciousness” and the remembrance and envisioning of ways to participate in and create civil societies and participatory democracies that support the survival of our planet for the future.
Ethnoautobiography creates safe educational spaces for all to learn the histories, cultures, and academic traditions of Native Peoples, communities of color in the U.S., and their interactions with dominant settler society. Ethno-autobiographies are used as tools for exploring histories of oppression and discrimination, and in order to develop the necessary courage, creativity, and understanding in overcoming racism and other forms of oppression. Liberation practices addressing social justice issues require both the witnessing and resolution of traumatic histories as well as the deconstruction and contextualization of settler, colonial, and supremacist histories. This process honors the complexities of who we are in a circle of storytelling and inquiry which validate the experiences of all citizens.
List of Riffs
List of Activities
List of Figures and Tables
List of Illustrations
Special Thanks
Ethnoautobiography: A Map to Decolonization and Indigenization by Leny Mendoza Strobel
The Ceremonial Stepping-Stones of Ethnoautobiography by Apela Colorado
Truth Makes Us, But First We Have to Free Truth by Stanley Krippner
Preface by Jurgen Werner Kremer & R Jackson-Paton
Chapter 0: Let’s Have a Conversation
Chapter 1: Who Am I?
Chapter 2: The Self – Now Larger, Now Smaller
Chapter 3: Why Not Simply “Autobiography’?
Chapter 4: Ethnoautobiography Defined
Chapter 5: We Are Moral Beings
Chapter 6: Community and Communitas
Chapter 7: Where Am I? Ethnoautobiography as Gateway to Place
Chapter 8: Connecting Nature, Self and History
Chapter 9: History – Memory and Imagination
Chapter 10: Mythic Stories
Chapter 11: Who Are My Ancestors
Chapter 12: En/gendering Embodied Ethnoautobiography
Chapter 13: Gathering Ourselves through Dreams
Chapter 14: Faith, Spirituality, Skepticism
Chapter 15: To Tell a Story
Chapter 16: Healing Ourselves – Healing Others
Chapter 17: Continuing the Conversation
Appendix: Ethnoautobiography as Research Methodology
Glossary
References
Index
Jürgen W. Kremer received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the Universität Hamburg, Germany. In 1982 Jurgen settled in the San Francisco Bay Area to teach full time and served as dean at Saybrook University and at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His teaching and research interests range from general psychology, clinical psychology and research methods to the relevance of indigenous knowledge for today as well as ethno-autobiography. For four years he co-directed a program for Native American students and others concerned with indigenous roots and origins. Today Jürgen is a tenured faculty member at the Santa Rosa Junior College.
Jürgen has published regularly since 1976, with 150 plus publications to his credit (journal articles, book chapters, books). Most recently he co-edited three volumes on culture, consciousness, and therapy. He published the textbook Psychology in Diversity, Diversity in Psychology – An Integrative Psychology for the 21st Century with Kendall-Hunt. His Ethnoautobiography (with R. Jackson-Paton) is in its second edition with the same publisher. Jürgen has served on several editorial boards and has been an executive editor for ReVision (a journal of consciousness and transformation) since 1994.
River Jackson-Paton is an embodied artist, educator & ethnoautobiographer. His other publications include Restor(y)ing Environmentalism: Decolonizing White Settlers in the United States: (Re)placing Posttraumatic Settler Disorder and ‘Rituals of Inquiry; or Looking for Culture and Truth.’ Current writing includes “Brain injury trans* formations: Neuro-queering post-traumatic settler dis-ease through embodied art & story,” narrating the portals of be/com/ing queer, dis-abled and living with bio-emotional suffering. These experiences embody the both/and of simultaneous dis-ease and trans* formative healing processes. River uses the pronoun “they” as a non-binary trans*gender person and signifying a complex approach to identity. Of mostly Celtic (English, Scottish, Irish & French) ancestry, living on Comanche & Caddo lands in the Arkikosa watershed in Dallas, Texas, River emphasizes embodiment, creativity, relationships with place, race & gender. Current art projects include a “bulk garbage coloring book,” “shadow words,” “cairns,” “knowing portals” & “garbage collection.” River lives with their person, Molly, & a dog named Groot, as well as having several human children and critters from previous relationships.
“Ethnoautobiography has profoundly transformed my classroom—from one riddled with fear and tension arising from facing into questions of race and cultural difference to an extraordinary atmosphere of openness, vulnerability, curiosity, and a new capacity to engage honestly in difficult conversations with others. Semester after semester, I watch the process and methodology of Ethnoautobiography work its wonders in opening up young minds and building a mini-community of folk committed to growth and to becoming socially engaged and ecologically aware. Students often come out of the class remarking that “it’s the best class I’ve ever had in my entire college career,” wishing all their classes could be conducted in the same integrative way, encouraging affective, not just cognitive, communication; full-bodied expression; and comprehensive exploration of historical perspectives.”
S. Lily Mendoza
Associate Professor
Center for Babaylan Studies
Oakland University Director
“The dimensions of Ethnoautobiography represent stepping stones or points of reflection that mirror the workings of our minds and have the capacity to identify distortions in our self and world. Each stepping stone is a teaching. When we hold that teaching before the light of indigenous mind it helps to free ourselves from the torment of being separated from the source of our being, the source of power. It helps us develop the capacity to experience life in all its vitality. In so doing, even just a moment of immersion in this ceremony points the way out of the disaster our rational mind has created by rejecting its ethnoautobiographical grounding.”
Apela Colorado Founder
Worldwide Indigenous Science Network
“The discourse on white privilege always stopped short of offering students a process on how to decolonize European colonial thinking and how to end whiteness. The workbook offers a pathway out of whiteness and white privilege, out of the masterful (but empty) self-constructed by modernity. Students are appreciative of the process that teaches them how to deal with the shadow material of history, how to rediscover their ancestral roots, how to connect with myths, storytelling, dreams, spirituality. As one student said, ‘This process gave me a more expansive sense of self and a more solid ground to stand on. I’m no longer afraid of letting go of my white privilege.’”
Leny Mendoza Strobel
Professor, American Multicultural Studies Department
Sonoma State University