A Conversation with Kimberly Holley, Executive Director, Sojourner Truth Center for Liberation & Justice

Kimberly Holley/John Grap for Second Wave Media

Kimberly Holley is the Executive Director of the Sojourner Truth Center for Liberation and Justice. She is also a member of the Battle Creek Coalition for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. 

Could you provide an update on the activities of the Coalition forTruth, Racial Healing & Transformation? 

The Battle Creek Coalition for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) is entering its fifth year of movement-building in the community. Much of TRHT’s community-driven efforts have focused on narrative change, racial healing & relationship-building, and housing. Below are highlights of some TRHT activities: 

Narrative Change 

Redefining Race – a virtual storytelling and community dialogue series that aims to provide a platform for honest conversations about race and amplify voices that are often unheard. See videos here; and recorded community dialogue sessions here.

Battle Creek Did Not Burn oral history project, capturing stories about the civil rights era in Battle Creek (paused due to the pandemic; will resume in late 2021, health guidelines permitting) 

Battle Creek Racial History Timeline Project – Cultivating Our Multiracial Narrative, an interactive timeline capturing inclusive accounts of national and local history that have impacted community members; will be used for public displays, curricula, and more (paused due to the pandemic; will resume in late 2021, health guidelines permitting) 

Co-hosting community dialogues and forums around issues that intersect with race Racial Healing & Relationship-Building 

Trained 12 racial healing practitioners skilled in leading intimate conversation to explore life experiences and perspectives around race and racism, and promoting our shared humanity 

Hosted 20+ large and small racial healing circles (pre-pandemic) to foster relationship-building as described in previous bulleted item 

Hosted 10+ virtual healing experiences (during pandemic/ongoing) to foster relationship-building as described in previous bulleted item. 

Co-sponsored community vigil after murder of George Floyd, and most recently in response to Asian American Pacific Islander hate crimes, in partnership with other community organizations and groups 

Urban Memorial & Racial Healing Garden – a space for community members to gather for flower-planting activities, fellowship, and other activities, as health guidelines allow. Located across from the Sojourner Truth Monument, on Hamblin Avenue at the base of the “penetrator."

National Day of Racial Healing (NDORH) - always the Tuesday immediately following MLK Day 

TRHT has hosted numerous events and activities each year, in celebration of NDORH, including community dinners and racial healing circles (pre-pandemic) 

This year, TRHT launched a yard sign campaign, and Racial Healing Love Letters to Battle Creek book project that will be published in conjunction with NDORH 2022 (see www.bctrht.org for details) Housing 

Following the 2018 community event featuring Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law, TRHT supported community members’ desire to develop housing solutions in Battle Creek. Activities have included strategies to increase home ownership among people of color, provide education on redlining, and dismantle neighborhood separation. 

At the systems level, TRHT is spearheading a Racial Equity Task Force to help ensure equitable distribution of government funding and other resources for housing assistance to vulnerable populations. 

What is the mission of the Sojourner Truth Center for Liberation & Justice? Could you give a bit of its history? Any update on recent activities, i.e., digitalization of archived material? 

We went through a very comprehensive and community-facing strategic planning process in 2019-2020, and we have re-branded the organization as the Sojourner Truth Center for Liberation and Justice. Our theory of change, and values documents are attached. 

Recent Activities Later this summer, the Sojourner Truth Center will launch Youth for Truth, a social justice program created by youth for youth. In addition, the Center will offer workshops and programming consistent with the Center’s new strategic direction. We will also continue to lift Sojourner Truth’s legacy with programming that provides a comprehensive overview of her life, and links to resources and archival materials so that history is more easily accessible. History Inspired by Sojourner Truth’s legacy, 

Dr. Velma Laws Clay established the Sojourner Truth Institute of Battle Creek in 1998 to expand the historical and biographical knowledge of Sojourner Truth’s life work and carry on her mission by promoting projects that accentuated the ideals and principles for which she stood. Over the decades the organization provided educational curriculum on Sojourner Truth to local schools, and hosted events and art programming. 

To what extent has the Sojourner Truth Institute been in collaboration with the Battle Creek Historical Society? 

The Historical Society of Battle Creek was the original fiscal sponsor for the Sojourner Truth Institute and both entities worked together under the umbrella of Heritage Battle Creek. Many projects resulted from this partnership, including education materials, oral history projects, etc. 

Although the Historical Society is no longer the fiscal sponsor, the Historical Society remains incredibly supportive of the Sojourner Truth Center, and the two entities will seek opportunities for collaboration in the future.

In your opinion, what is the strongest piece of Sojourner Truth's legacy? 

She was not limited by her circumstances or environment. 

Driven by faith and fortitude, Sojourner Truth used her life experiences and gifts (speaking, wit, resourcefulness) to advocate for the abolition of slavery, for women’s rights, and equality. 

Lesser known, she was the first Black woman to win a lawsuit against a white man (for the illegal slave trade of her son.) She actually won three lawsuits during her lifetime. She copyrighted her image and sold photos of herself at speeches, and her autobiography to earn income. She secured resources for Black civil war soldiers, and freed slaves. She met with President Lincoln, advocated for land for freed slaves, and spoke out against capital punishment. 

All of this, for a person that could not read or write, was formerly enslaved, and during a period when Black people were viewed as property and less than human.

What influence has your father, Bobby Holley, a well-known community activist, had on your life? 

He taught me to unabashedly pursue my dreams and always stand up for my beliefs and what is right and just on behalf of others. 

Is there anything else you'd like to mention? 

I encourage people to see Sojourner Truth as a model for civic engagement, that they too can apply to their lives. She assessed her life experiences, beliefs, and gifts, and used that combination to advocate for the change she wanted to see in the world. You can do the same thing. Her vision was on a national scale, but yours does not have to be that broad. Yours could be the change you want to see in your neighborhood, school, city or beyond.

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer: A Review

Robin Wall Kimmerer

“In the Western tradition, there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top – the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation – and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation.’ We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn – we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance.”

This thought is what frames Robin Wall Kimmerer’s BRAIDING SWEETGRASS.

Throughout her book, Kimmerer weaves profound insights of Native American culture with botany (she has a Ph.D. in botany and teaches environmental biology).  She is also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

“[T]rees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.”

Kimmerer notes: “A species and culture that treat the natural world with respect and reciprocity will surely pass on generosity to ensuing generations with a higher frequency than the people who destroy it. The stories we choose to shape our behaviors have adaptive consequences.”

She challenges the materialistic, human-centric Western worldview of the 21^st Century. “If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”

An interesting piece of this discussion is the English language itself. “English doesn’t give us the tools for incorporating respect for animacy [which Collins Dictionary defines as 'the state of being alive or animate.'] In English you are either a human or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a nonhuman being to an 'it'…”

For Kimmerer, this linguistic fact has enormous consequences.

“The animacy of the world is something we already know, but the language of animacy teeters on extinction – not just for Native peoples, but for everyone. Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them intention and compassion – until we teach them not to.” She sums up this thought: “The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.”

As a mother to two daughters, Kimmerer touches upon the concept of Mother Earth, noting that it includes self-reliance, nurturing and a powerful, reciprocal love.

“The earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we cannot provide ourselves… She gives what we need without being asked. I wonder if she gets tired, old Mother Earth. Or if she too is fed by the giving.”

In recognizing Mother Earth's abundant love, Kimmerer spends a chapter describing the importance of gratitude, beginning with the Thanksgiving Address, part of Onondaga Nation culture.

The Thanksgiving Address includes thanks for the cycles of life, Mother Earth, the waters of the world, fish and plants, berries, medicine herbs, trees, all the beautiful animals of the world, birds, the Four Winds, the Moon, enlightened teachers through the ages, and to the Great Spirit – the Creator.

At the Onondaga Nation School, the day begins and ends with a recitation of the Thanksgiving Address.

“Imagine raising children in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority,” Kimmerer observes. “You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need.”

“The land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes, with roasting ears and blackberries and birdsongs. By a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons. She provides for us and teaches us to provide for ourselves. That’s what good mothers do.”

As Kimmerer describes how black ash baskets are made, she points out, “In weaving well-being for land and people, we need to pay attention to the lessons of the three rows [that make up each basket]. Ecological well-being and the laws of nature are always the first row…The second reveals material welfare, the subsistence of human needs. Economy built on ecology…” with the third row being made up of “respect, reciprocity, All Our Relations. I think of it as the spirit row.”

Taken together all three rows “represent recognition that our lives depend upon one another, human needs being only one row in the basket that must hold us all.”

A few pages past this magnificent explanation, Kimmerer speaks with equal eloquence about botany. “To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don’t speak the same language, I can’t ask them directly and they won’t answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask.”

One of the more interesting points that Kimmerer shares is a Native view of time.

“[I]n the popular way of thinking, history draws a time “line,” as if time marched in lockstep in only one direction… But Nanahozho’s [Anishinaabe spirit] people know time as a circle. Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself… If time is a turning circle, there is a place where history and prophecy converge.”

And, to the point, she continues: “After all these generations since Columbus, some of the wisest of Native elders still puzzle over the people who came to our shores. They look at the toll on the land and say, ‘The problem with these new people is that they don’t have both feet on the shore... They don’t seem to know if they’re staying or not.’ This same observation is heard from some contemporary scholars who see in the social pathologies and relentlessly materialistic culture the fruit of homelessness, a rootless past… [C]an Americans, as a nation of immigrants, learn to live here as if they were staying?... What happens when we truly become native to a place, when we finally make a home?”

Kimmerer’s BRAIDING SWEETGRASS is full of wisdom, mixed with sorrow for the way things are, and a mother’s strong love that nurtures hope.

She urges us to move from a humancentric focus to include all of nature.                            

“The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack.”

And she asks “Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?”

Kimmerer relates her own family’s experience with attempted assimilation – which included her grandfather’s time at the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania. From 1879 for nearly thirty years, Native children were forcibly taken from their families to attend the school. The school’s mission was “to kill the Indian and save the Man.”

“What was stolen at Carlisle has been a knot of sorrow I’ve carried like a stone buried in my heart. I am not alone...”

She then writes about the beauty of old-growth forests – that Western, industrialized culture sees only as products and not living plants.

“Old-growth cultures, like old-growth forests, have not been exterminated. The land holds their memory and the possibility of regeneration. They are not only a matter of ethnicity or history, but of relationships born out of reciprocity between land and people.”

For Kimmerer, part of the answer to this dilemma comes from the particular lens that’s used to examine the challenge of living on a living, breathing planet, where humans are actually a small part of the whole.

“Many [scientists] seem to believe that the intelligence they access is only their own. They lack the fundamental ingredient: humility… It takes humility to learn from other species.”

She makes the observation: “It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a ‘species loneliness’ – estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night.”

And, finally, Kimmerer makes the conclusion that “creating an alternative to destructive economic structures is imperative, it is not enough. It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart. Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the economy. Gratitude plants the seed for abundance… A deep awareness of the gifts of the earth and of each other is medicine.”

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Braiding Sweetgrass was published by Milkweed Editions, a nonprofit organization based in Bde Ota (Minneapolis), the traditional home of the Dakota people. 

Finding Spiritual Common Sense

Sometimes our view of G_d is too small.

We can take what we learned in Sunday School, Synagogue or Mosque and use that as the standard by which we relate to G_d.

While there is nothing inherently "wrong" with that, it can be a foundation upon which not much else is built. 

A restricted view of G_d can severely limit an understanding of an all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful G_d.

If you believe that G_d is a force or being that created the universe, that makes G_d the most powerful thing that ever existed. 

And if G_d created everything, then that includes science. There's no need to have an artificial separation between science and religion. In fact, I would guess that G_d loves it when creation is moving in the step of integration. That is, everything is related to everything else. 

The challenge, for us humans living in Western Culture, is that we tend to like rules and guidelines and structure. Even the most progressive of us. To be clear, I'm not saying that rules, and guidelines and structure are wrong. But when it comes to understanding G_d, too often organized religions tend to accentuate the dogma and not the dynamic nature of G_d.

When this happens dogma tends to suffocate wisdom. The Ten Commandments turn into the Thousand Things You Should (or shouldn't) Be Doing to earn salvation.

Photo Credit: Pew Charitable Trusts

Decades ago there was a phrase called "common sense." It is defined as "good sense and sound judgment in practical matters."

Given this basic definition, I'm wondering if there is such a thing as spiritual common sense?

For instance, if we had an understanding that G_d is good; that owning other human beings and forcing them to work for us is wrong; then why would we subscribe to a religion that excused slavery? It just wouldn't make common spiritual sense, would it? But in pre-Civil War America, that's exactly what many G_d fearing Christians did.

But my main point isn't that religion gets infected with bad politics sometimes. 

The point is bigger than that.

A broader, deeper yardstick for appreciating G_d would ultimately cut down on a lot of bad stuff to begin with. Stuff that depends upon a very restricted view of who G_d is.

And maybe one reason why we humans in Western Culture seem to be so resistant to positive change is that we're locked in to a religious system that itself is resistant.

Growth requires change.

There's no getting around that.

No one would suggest that going back to manufacturing Model-A Fords would be a great way to cut down on air pollution. So why would anyone suggest that a first-century understanding of G_d be all we would need for living in the 21st Century?

Jesus added insight into the understanding of G_d in his time. You could say that Jesus was an expert at spiritual common sense. Which could have been why he annoyed the contemporary religious leaders of his day.

If organized religion can't grow along with our understanding of G_d, it runs the risk of becoming increasingly irrelevant. Witness a recent Gallup poll (March 2021), which found that only 47 percent of American adults belong to a church, synagogue or mosque.

Given all of this, perhaps a worldwide pandemic, like Covid-19 can serve as a wake-up call. 

Covid has shown glaring inequalities in income, poverty rates, gender, and a host of other categories.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Covid-19 spawned a real awakening - not of organized religion, in particular - but a reawakening of spiritual common sense?

And what if a reawaking of spiritual common sense brings a deeper, fuller understanding and appreciation of G_d? 

The possibilities are limitless!