The Power Shift: Decolonising Development

Oral traditions and collective healing through language and culture. Tija Andriamananjara interviewed.

• Kate Bird • Season 1 • Episode 42

Share episode

In this week’s episode, Tija speaks to us about oral traditions, reparative justice, the violence of colonisation, and how that generates intergenerational harms. We talk about the erasure of culture, the loss of language, and the role of storytelling, song, and intergenerational love and joy as part of the healing process. Tija emphasises the role of culture in addressing mental health and the intergenerational trauma of colonisation. We discuss the importance of storytelling to sustain oral history and keep the languages of colonised countries alive. Tija offers us a hopeful way forward for collective healing from the intergenerational harms of colonisation.

Tija Andriamananjara is a trauma informed senior social worker from Madagascar joining us from St Paul, Minnesota (US). Her experience and background include education, child development, mental health and human services. She was a visiting educator in Madagascar at a local NGO helping children and women facing domestic violence. Her graduate studies focused on social justice and reconciliation. Her graduate practicum included working with a 3-aged group of Native American kids, youth and women. Tija published 2 children’s books with songs solely in Malagasy in late 2023 and lastly in October of this year to promote her mother tongue and familial connections through reading at home. 

If you’re interested to find out more about Tija’s work, take a look here:

Recent work:

Recommended resources:

Kate:

Hello, I'm Professor Kate Bird and this is the Power Shift Decolonising Development. I'm speaking to you today from Madagascar, and joining us are my co-host, Dr. Nompilo Ndlovu, and our guest, Tija Andriamananjara. Tija speaks to us about oral traditions, reparative justice, the violence of colonisation and how that generates intergenerational harms. We talk about the erasure of culture, the loss of language, and the role of storytelling, song, and intergenerational love and joy as part of the healing process. Now this is one of our first podcast episodes to touch on culture and mental health in this way. I hope you'll listen on for more. It's a very rich episode. If you'd like to please click on the show notes below for more and do like us and follow. And if you're interested in receiving up to date information and useful readings, please join our mailing list and you'll receive a regular newsletter with information about the work that we do. Bye for now. Welcome to the Power Shift Decolonising Development, the podcast series seeking to bring together thinkers, practitioners, and activists to share ideas, inspire change, and identify tools for practical action. I'm Professor Kate Bird, a socio economist and director of the Development Hub. Today's co host is Dr. Nompilo Ndlovu. Before I hand over to Nompilo, I just want to let you all know that I'm recording this from Madagascar, and our guest today is a Malagasy who lives in Madagascar in America. So we're making that link. I'm very excited to be here in Madagascar, and I thought it was a lovely opportunity to actually reach out to the Malagasy community internationally and to bring them onto our podcast. Now over to you Nompilo.

Nompilo:

Thank you for that, Kate. Hello, everyone. I am Dr. Nompilo Ndlovu. I'm a Zimbabwean living and working in South Africa. I'm an oral historian who applies gender frameworks to my work with communities in Africa. Recent work has included involvement in a mixed method study on poverty dynamics in Zimbabwe, where I led the work on gender and marginalisation. My PhD focused on mass violence, memory, and local transitional justice in post colonial Zimbabwe. Back to you, Kate.

Kate:

Thanks, Nompilo. Today we're really excited, as I said, to be talking to Tija Andriamananjara. So Tija is a trauma informed senior social worker from Madagascar joining us from St. Paul in Minnesota, the United States. Her experience and background include education, child development, mental health, and human services. She was a visiting educator in Madagascar at a local NGO, helping children and women facing domestic violence. Her graduate studies focused on social justice and reconciliation. So that's a link with Nompilo's work. Her graduate practicum included working with a 3-aged group of Native American kids, women, and youth. Tija has published two children's books with songs solely in Malagasy in late 2023 and October this year to promote her mother tongue and familial connections through reading at home. Her current work and endeavors include exploring the link between colonialism and mental distress and healing through language and intergenerational love. For more on Tija and her work, click on the show notes below this episode. Over to you, Nompilo.

Nompilo:

Thank you. All righty then, let's get into it. Tija, your work makes a link between colonialism and mental distress. Can you please explain to our audience about the experiences that led you to focus on this linkage?

Tija:

Thank you and hello, Kate and Nompilo. So Tija Andriamananjara, from Madagascar, but currently working and living in the U. S. And, yeah, so to answer your question, very interestingly, there is no, I would say, coincidence in why I'm currently working in mental health, but also all my journey through here and why I'm here today. So, a little bit about my background. So I grew up in Madagascar and I lived there for the first 22 years of my life and moved here in the U. S. about 16 years ago. So this hasn't come to me yet when I was in Madagascar, but came about slowly as I study and also kind of observe my surroundings growing up. So when you are away from your country, you have a lot of time to ponder and also to look back. So my great grandfather was deployed to France to fight during the World War II. And, apparently, we were told, and this was by my grandparents and my parents told us that he died there and his remains were never returned and nor to this day, we don't know where that is. That created some, I would say deep longing, but also looking for answers, but also in our culture, not having not seen, or even in different cultures, I would say as well, um, your loved one, you know, like not knowing anything about them. And also not able to say goodbye or even honor what they did, what he did in this case. So that experience brought that questioning, but also deep wound, not only in my great grandmother, who wasn't working, so she had to find means to take care of her two kids then. I think my grandmother was under 10, maybe around six or eight years old when this happened. And that was a big shock trauma that was unresolved to this day, continued to be intergenerational trauma in my family. So that and including how I grew up or how I was raised, very similar to how the colonisers treated Malagasy people, you know, like, beating, whooping, all of those were, brought as part of bringing up kids or even to this day people are still doing that. But if also you ask about what colonisation or colonialism means in Malagasy word, it's called Fanjanahantany, and there is a root, janaka, meaning children in that word. So all of the practices that were inherited from that are still continuing to this day. That would make you think, is that, you know, how you're gonna raise your future generation and what kind of future that would lead where we're right now and thinking about that and where that will lead the future generation.

Nompilo:

Thank you for sharing that, Tija. I was quite surprised at just the commonalities with a lot of experiences in the work that I wrote. But I just wanted to ask you to clarify a little bit more the local words that you used, and to make sure that I understood you correctly. Are you saying that the local word for colonisation relates to children?

Tija:

Yeah, so Fanjanahantany means colonisation in Malagasy word. And Fanjanah, so janaka is the root, the first, so it's two words combined. So janaka is children, and tany is land. So there's those two words land and children in colonisation in Malagasy word.

Nompilo:

Okay. Intriguing. Which is why it's so important to talk about intergenerational trauma, right? As you say. Yes. It will lead us into the next question. People around the world know Madagascar for its amazing biodiversity, at least that's what I associate it with, rich natural resources and considerable potential. You celebrate this richness, but you also know of a much darker side, with many Madagascans struggling with long term, intergenerational trauma. How does this trauma affect Malagasy people? I know you've started speaking about it based on your own experience. How does it affect Malagasy people?

Tija:

Yeah, yeah. So I would say part of it is, what's brought in, like, for example, coloniser will come into the territory and then bring white body supremacy, and that stays in there once they leave or some of them still stay, but it is very much staying in the body of present people not only in the ancestors, but it does continue. So, that, I would say creates a lot of internal conflict, as I mentioned earlier, but also denial, high shame, that that white body supremacy, like people who have been victims are also becoming victimisers. So how that's continuing in that. And then if you think about that, that creates a cycle. And if that's not broken, then it still perpetuates and then becomes like the normal, basically a cycle of violence, a cycle of denial, that continued division right now, as you say, and Kate, you are there in person, but the things that we hear a lot, and even I work closely with local organisations, for a couple years now in Madagascar, and we see a lot of cases in addictions rising, in suicide, in, sexual violence, that has been there before, but it's now getting bigger and bigger because, see, in mental health, if let's say one generation who is facing that shock trauma and haven't had time to work on that or heal, that will become bigger and bigger and bigger until it is faced and then healed. You know, as I said, that cycle continues and becomes even harder to heal. And some of them will become even diseases, as you know, all the social issues that, that relates to that too. Yeah, very much so. So, that is I would say the long term effect, but also, intergenerational trauma is a soul wound. It is a soul wound. So, that requires a lot of, I would say techniques to go around that, not only someone who will start to think knowing, understanding what happened. But also being able to face what's coming, what might happen.

Nompilo:

Thank you, Tija. You remind me of previous podcast guests who have spoken about how in the aftermath of political colonisation, economic and cultural colonisation can persist, with peoples of that nation still internalising the messages of inferiority and superiority caused or created by the coloniser. One example is Eyob Balcha Gebremerian who describes this in episode seven of our podcast and talks about how colonisation sought to erase different worldviews and knowledges. So there was this whole idea of standardising, right, the story as well. This colonisation of the mind is perhaps one source of trauma for people from nations that were under colonial rule. Can you describe some of the other ways in which colonisation created trauma, which is still spilling out across the generations?

Tija:

Mm. Mm hmm. Yeah, so the objectification of people, and that creates issues. Not only trust within the local people, but also people who have been colonised will become untrustful of other people and themselves and even people who are the same as them. So, when someone is not trusting themselves, also they might be not understanding their capacity, that continued shame, but also inside, but also inward, outward, creating deep fear, also not understanding or thinking that they cannot be part of the solution. One of the things that was brought was also religion, right? So you mentioned earlier culture, and the different cultures, different ways of seeing, what are some ways that someone could leave? So there's that loss of culture, loss of meanings. Because culture also brings meaningful lives. When you don't know what your culture is, then that is the inner conflict and not knowing that you can be part of the solution, that can create codependence in that, like, people who have brought solution, because part of the colonisation was that they are bringing like, oh, we have the answer for you. So then we're coming back to the trust piece. Yeah, so if that continues, then the vision continues as well. But again, the mental health piece is that not knowing, you know, codependency, because addiction is part of that codependent tendencies. So, that, I think, deep inside has been affected by the colonisation and still having some effects to this day to the local people who are not able to, or even not remembering who they are, what they can do to help themselves. And you spoke about the richness and the biodiversity, all the resources that Malagasy people have or Madagascar have, but local people, they don't benefit from those. And part of the reason is because it's still those practices from before that is continuing, to this day, like still benefiting the people who have power, and not the ones who it should be benefiting the local people first.

Nompilo:

Okay. Perhaps let's talk on to the more positive side of things and how people can take their power back, right? Madagascar has an oral culture and tradition, which is the fun and exciting bits of doing oral history. How do you think the Malagasy language and storytelling skills could have healing power for the people of Madagascar?

Tija:

I was thinking about this and part of the reason why I'm writing books is to continue keeping that language, right? And colonisation also brought different language but also different culture. And how, once you have that, people tend to think that that's better than yours, right? That again, coming back to that trust issues. So, I would say, right now, because that's been shaking, I would say, we need to come back to that. I know we're switching to more positive side of colonisation and finding solution, but the reality is that people are not utilising Malagasy language, not as often as they should. And again, because of that, not trusting that it can bring healing. But also there is the forgetfulness of the shock trauma, the effect is not remembering what's good about you, what else you can use. So as the oral language, people also tend to not put it in writing. And, you know, what's written stays, what's told go, so that is one thing I would say, we need to use the oral, going back to that culture and tradition as a healing, and the other side of that too is that we don't have much data or truth or facts about what happened, and that might create, again, that inner conflict, the truth not being told, knowing those can create healing as well.

Nompilo:

I just want to make a quick note before I hand over to Kate, because I think I've had a bit of time. I do want to be very clear that when I was saying this speak about the more positive sides of oral culture, I was not intimating that there's a positive side of colonisation, because that's definitely not a stance that I take. So I hope that wasn't misunderstood. But also just to say, I find that whenever I see people doing storytelling in the local language, I also find that it's a very gendered thing. In Zimbabwe, I can almost think of the older mama's, the grandparents who will teach you the art of storytelling or talk you through a story. But I don't often know that, say young boys are encouraged in the same way, right, they are not encouraged to be storytellers. They are encouraged to be factual because it's just a gender norm. Whereas younger girls will be told gossip by your grandmother and learn and actually be encouraged to be fictive as a way of healing and as a way of dealing sometimes even with painful things. And I've just often wondered that when we say storytelling and oral culture can sustain people because it's an outlet, do we see this happening generally across all genders in the Madagascar culture or do we actually see it having confined spaces and people who are actually allowed to function in it as well?

Tija:

Uh, it's a mixed, how I remember growing up is, there is some of that, but also depending on which area or which tribe, because, I would say for the most part it has a tendency of that, I'm trying to think of like how I grew up in the rural areas because that's where we would go during when school is off, which is not summer in Madagascar, but it's winter. So, where everyone dance around and then it's basically, yeah, remembering they're like different genders. But then when it comes to chores division, then there will be like chores allocated to women and girls, and then tasks are allocated to men. But then when it comes to coming up together and do the dances and gathering as a community together. Again, this might be just my experience. It might be different in Madagascar since there is at least 18 tribes in Madagascar. Yeah.

Nompilo:

Kate, I've taken quite a bit of space, so I'm going to hand it over to you.

Kate:

Thanks, Nompilo. I'm very glad that you had the chance to follow up on the oral history elements, though, because I see strong parallels in your work, the two of you, and also the comments that Tija made about confronting the harms of the past and how the harms of the past, if they're held in oral history and oral testimony can be discounted by Eurocentric and colonial cultures because the written word is taken as having supremacy over the oral testimony. So, I think this idea of capturing the voices of people and the testimony of people and their stories of colonialism is a really important one. And using that as a tool for healing. So I hope that that's something that we can kind of think about going forwards. But something that strikes me about the conversation that we've had so far is that many people listening to this podcast who haven't studied the impact of trauma and don't know going very much about trauma might kind of think that, oh, well, a bad thing happens. And you draw a line under it and you move on. What is all this talk about trauma and intergenerational trauma and how the trauma of colonialism is alive and impacting on families in Madagascar today? And I just thought I would say a couple of things based on my own experience as a mother of adopted children, because I've had to do a lot of reading about trauma to try to understand my kids. And it really resonates with some things that you've said. So, my understanding of trauma is that it has a long run impact and if an infant is traumatised, it basically re-patterns the brain. It damages the brain. The brain will never be the same again compared to a child who hasn't experienced trauma and with older children and with adults, stress hormones, the hormones of cortisol and adrenaline flood the body and can cause long term harm. And there's something called the ACEs. And if anyone's interested, you can look this up online. It's ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences. And you can do a nine question questionnaire that tells you what your ACE score is. And I'm just betting that children around the world in conflict zones, but also children at the time of political colonialism will have experienced very high levels of ACEs. They will have experienced adverse childhood experiences. And this has a profound impact on the body and the mind. In terms of the body, these adverse experiences trigger changes at the genetic level. So there's something called epigenics where genes can be switched on and that gene is then activated and it doesn't then unactivate. So that activated gene is then passed on to your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, and that can be traced medically, creating heritable conditions. So the reason I'm flagging this is for members of our audience who haven't done the reading that I've done, haven't had the exposure that Tija and Nompilo have had through living in cultures that were previously politically colonised and still have the cultural, political, economic repercussions of that colonial experience. So I suppose I'm just wanting to say thank you very much for being here on the podcast because this is really flagging something that we haven't tackled before. And now I'm coming to a question after my long blah blah. My work's taken me to a number of countries that have experienced conflict and insecurity. Something that has been stated over and over by people at the community level in these conflict or insecure environments is that the conflict damaged their culture. Norms changed, community leadership and relationships frayed, and there were damages to the way that people had lived that impacted on household relationships, the way that resources were managed and so on. And these changes are very hard to undo. I wonder if you think that viewing colonialism as an extended period of violence might help us to understand its long run impacts on culture and people's inner worlds.

Tija:

Yeah, the answer is definitely yes. And before I go answer that question, I want to go back to what Nompilo mentioned earlier so I also agree that, colonisation is an atrocity and all the things that it has brought, but what I meant by the mental health piece, and also there is what Kate introduced earlier on trauma. There is wisdom in trauma, not saying that, you know, to impose that on people, but there is wisdom in trauma. And that's what makes this a dilemma in one way, because one of the solutions is to go in the wound, to really go deep and understand, because if you keep fleeing that, then it's gonna chase you until you face that. Basically in mental health that's what's will bring forth healing is to know the truth to what really happened. That's gonna help with understanding. And then possibly reconciliation and forgiveness. So, back to your question, Kate. So, colonisation, even though, I would say it affects everyone in the equation, colonisers and colonised, even though not alike, it's different, but that is why it's essential to break that cycle, to really look into that cycle of violence, but also the effects, as we mentioned earlier, about some of the effects is that how it becomes abuse within the family, or some of the effects also is, I don't like this term, but it is a clinical term. It's called self sabotage. So all of this are unconsciously, because we as human beings, we want to be good for ourselves but that's not the case with trauma. The effects are like, unconsciously, people will do those things, for example, addiction that we mentioned earlier, suicide, abuse in the family. Those are unconsciously being passed down and will continue because they don't think that consciously feeling like, oh, there's nothing else that we could use because we have been using this and we don't know any different. So, therefore, breaking that cycle of violence to go to cycle of justice, and cycle of justice is going to bring the healing.

Kate:

It's very interesting, thank you. And just taking you back to what you've just said, you're talking about justice, you're talking about confronting the harms that have been done and you're talking about on an individual level that individuals need to confront the harm that's been done to them. One of the things that I'm aware of in Madagascar is that there's a very strong collective culture, with a lot of social reciprocity and mutual support. And that in a way, this individualistic way of being is a cultural imposition. It's a Eurocentric mode of being and it's not that deeply rooted in Madagascar, which has much more of a collectivist, a mutually supportive approach. So rather than just delving in deep as an individual, which I'm sure needs to happen as well, I wonder if you see a role for a more community wide or tribe wide or nationwide response. Earlier you talked about reconciliation, and I think for reconciliation, my understanding, and Nompilo I know has worked on this and so have you, but my understanding for reconciliation to take place there needs to be an acknowledgement of the harms that are done, the harms that have been done, so that the agent, the actor, the nation that has caused harm needs in some way to acknowledge the harm that has been done. And I just wonder how that fits with your thinking about healing.

Tija:

Yeah, I don't know if it's gonna happen, but should we wait for that to happen to start healing? No, I would say that's, therefore, that we talked about that earlier about the trust, but also, when you don't do that healing, you become your own enemy, right? So then I would say, not waiting for that to happen, but continue with that self healing. And so yeah, to go back to what you mentioned on the individualistic, you know, healing has both like individual level, but also community level. And, I'm seeing people are starting to realise in Madagascar that there is a need for being a little bit, you know, like doing that self care. Self care starts with you, you know, you don't have to wait for other people to care for you. And that's what we talked about earlier, but that collectivism that becomes toxic. If you don't know, if you don't really have that boundaries around taking care of yourself first, because if you don't, then you are not able to take care of other people either, if you're not taking care of yourself. So yeah, it is complex in that way, but I would say I also very much believe in neuroplasticity, and how, there's hope. And that's the reason why I'm doing my job is, yeah, I believe in that we can do things to make, I would say a repair, starting with self repair work.

Kate:

So I can see that building blocks for healing could start with the individual, and then move outwards from there, perhaps, and I know with your work on language and storytelling, that is certainly a way for healed individual to spread that message family wide and then community wide. It's been great talking to you today. You've brought a new set of themes into our podcast. It's fascinating to begin to think about these issues and think about the implications of them if we're going to help to build a truly decolonised future. I'd be very interested to hear what you would recommend to our listeners and viewers of the practical steps that they can take to help to undo the damage done by colonisation.

Tija:

Yeah, this is my my favorite question. So why? Because I think part of where we can start to make that repair and that healing is to grieve that loss. Grieve those atrocities, all the things that happened that we didn't have any control over, at the same time as listening to that internal anger and rage. Because that unfelt and unheard rage is what creates those self sabotage tendencies. Those continue with those inner conflict, not knowing where to go, this helplessness, hopelessness. So going back again, knowing the truth, but also through storytelling. And then grieve those loss, mourn as a nation, it's never too late to mourn, to grieve, and it doesn't have to be, you know, there is no time frame, like how long you can grieve. Someone with deep loss like that could grieve their entire lives while also doing the work. So that, and then the grieving will help people do more compassionate inquiry, will move to self compassion. And this ties into the self care, self understanding, and through going back to your language. Like, for example, I'm here, I barely speak Malagasy except to my husband and my kids, but I constantly dig with, like, what does this mean? This means something because Malagasy language is a living language. ving your language and language brings culture. In culture, there's the arts, there's, you know, all of those healing that can be part of that. Use what we have. We have a lot of resources that we barely use locally, I would say right now here, it's cold and, you know, you are in Madagascar right now, Kate, and it's hot and I would want to be out and be in the sun and enjoy, but, you know, celebrate what you have. Sometimes people are taking for granted, what they have, and I understand some of the reasons, behind that, because all of the other basic needs are not met, but still, you know, celebrating what you have and use those to the best of each ability. What else? One thing that this is personal to me, but also I think, and one of the reasons I published it in Malagasy was that there is a song that my husband's grandfather sang to his kids and grandkids that we are still singing today, every day to our kids. And that is what I wrote in a book. And yeah, so that's intergenerational love. And this was before Madagascar received its independence, as the song was sang in the family, and now we're still continuing. So remembering those, because you talked about epigenetics earlier, Kate, but that's part of it. There is intergenerational loss, but there is also intergenerational love. And to look into that and see that closely. Yeah...

Kate:

That's lovely. Thank you. I love the fact that you start off in this little end piece by talking about grieving, and you end up with celebrating and love. So, we talk about grieving, and I think part of grieving is actually listening to the oral testimonies, because the colonisers and what they wrote about the colonial period in Madagascar won't fully represent what happened and will probably almost certainly distort it. So this is an opportunity for oral testimony to contribute to a grieving process and confronting what really happened. But I love the fact that you say that although grieving might last a lifetime, you can do stuff alongside that. And you emphasise the importance of celebrating what you have and intergenerational love. And I think that's a really lovely place to finish our podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us. And I'd like to thank you and say goodbye and I'll hand over to Nompilo for the last word.

Nompilo:

Thank you so much, Tija. I don't have any further thoughts. It's just lots of process and good luck with your continuing journey in this very important field. Yeah.

Tija:

Thank you so much for having me. And it's been a pleasure to share a little bit of what I have. It's still a work in progress, but I appreciate our exchange and this will give me opportunity to also continue and think about ways to work around this issue.

Kate:

Thank you so much. Bye for now.

Tija:

Bye.