The Difference Orùnmilá Makes: Ancestralidade and the Past as Project

Abstract

The term via in Portuguese means “route” or “path,” a way to something or to get somewhere. Via also means “by way of”—a means of realizing something. Pai Paulo’s use of via to frame ancestralidade (ancestrality) reflects both definitions: (1) a historical engagement with identity by way of an ancestral past, and (2) the meanings and practices through which one cultivates, maintains, and realizes these links and a sense of self in new contexts and present circumstances. Ancestralidade is historical and emergent; it involves the past as well as future possibility. It is about being and becoming (Hall 1990). Thus, for black Brazilians, the idea of “knowing what we are” and “what we want to be” through ancestralidade does not simply involve reconstruction of the past to recover “tradition” or an essential identity. Rather, ancestralidade involves reconstruction of the past on one’s own terms, taking a relation to history through one’s own experience, and maintaining African and Afro-descendant ways of being, values, integrity, and knowledge that coloniality devalues, eliminates, or seeks to colonize and unequally assimilate. This deployment of ancestralidade, in its complexity, works toward the very reinvention of a black Brazilian way of life that preeminent black scholar and activist Abdias do Nascimento notes above; it makes possible the rebuilding of a society in the present that is oriented toward a future of black liberation.

We trust the mental aptitude of blacks, and believe in reinventing ourselves and our history. Reinvention of an Afro-Brazilian way of life founded on historical experience, [and upon] the use of critical knowledge and the inventiveness of institutions battered by colonialism and racism. In short, rebuild in the present a society directed towards the future, but taking into account what has been useful and positive in the achievements of the past.

Abdias do Nascimento, O Quilombismo

A ancestralidade é nossa via de identidade histórica, sem ela, não sabemos o que somos e nunca saberemos o que queremos ser.

Ancestrality is our route to an historical identity, without it we do not know what we are, and we will never know what we want to be.

Paulo Cesar Oliveira (Pai Paulo), president of the Centro Cultural Orùnmilá