Bella holds still as her mother dresses her for her first
time as Atabey in a Taino Full Moon Ceremony in their neighborhood of
Hazelwood. The ceremony marked the last full moon for the winter season
and honors the monthly cycles of the earth, human women, and Atabey, or
the cosmic matriarch in the Taino people’s tradition. Miguel Sague, a
behike (or shaman) at Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle, spoke of the
way that the full moon pulls on the tide’s of the earth’s blood, or the
oceans and water. “Human blood also does the same thing, at least in the
body of women,” he said, "All of us, including men, all benefit by
this cycle of fertility.“
Bella’s mother,
Dayvanna, held tears in her eyes as she watched her daughter take this
right of passage. "I get to witness you and all the studies you’ve done
to be able to embrace this moment for yourself.” She thanked the cosmic
mother for another month of life and blew prayers in smoke to her
ancestors.
I felt the weight of hundreds
of years of colonization on my shoulders as I watched this beautiful
moment unfold. I know the harsh history of photojournalism, white
colonialism, and indigenous people, the conflict and misunderstanding
caused by the lens of outsiders, pressing up against the understanding
that there I was, in a small living room, witnessing something that this
young woman had been anticipating her whole life. My head still swarmed with thoughts of the history of my
whiteness crashing up against this beautiful, breathtaking, quiet
acknowledgement of the infinite and divine, womanhood and moonhood, of a
repeating line of mothers and daughters that goes back farther than I
can understand.
Miguel must have sensed my struggle. He
looked at me and told me that the Taino people had painted their ceremonies on cave walls, which
read as accounts of those times, the revelations and traditions and
manifestations that occurred. “You are one of those cave painters on
those cave walls,” he told me. Dayvanna agreed.
I
don’t know if they knew that this week, with what we’ve been dealing
with in our newsroom, these words, this beautiful expression of
forgiveness and understanding, would give me the strength and clarity of purpose I need to
carry through. There’s still more work to do (okay, a lot of work to
do), but I’ll never forget that moment.
