Co-op Tuesdays: Culture Sharing in Your Learning Space

I know it ain’t actually Tuesday, but since our Co-op Tuesdays at our MRM cooperative in Connecticut can be super busy, I’m often too tired to write my reflections by the time I get home. Anyhoo…

I want to talk about culture sharing. What do I mean by this term? I want to know how do you create opportunities or allow space for both youth and adults in your learning space to share and exchange pieces of who they are, how they live, and who their people are? I’ll go first and share a bit about how I did this at our co-op this week. But I most definitely want to hear from ya’ll too!

In March, I had attended a Woman’s healing and spiritual retreat in my homeland, Boriken/Puerto Rico (Photo above is Finca Martinete, the organic farm I stayed at in Patillas, PR the first leg of my trip.). While there, I had the amazing opportunity to learn alongside Indigenous farmers and spiritual healers who shared practices, plant knowledge, and spiritual wisdom with me. I learned things I never knew about myself and my Taino ancestors. Thinking about this experience still gives me goosebumps and heart flutters. To say it was life changing is an understatement. To be honest, there’s so much I’ve learned that I didn’t know where to begin when I knew I needed to bring some of what I experienced back to our community. So, I decided to go slowly and allow intuition to lead me. 

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been really feeling an urge to share the tatooing practices of my Taino ancestors. While I’m still learning so much about the art of body painting, this didn’t stop me from wanting to dive into this topic and practice with our youth and caregivers at co-op. Yes, that’s right. You are allowed to not know all the things and still know enough to pass that wisdom on and allow it to lead to more in depth learning in community with others.

So, we did just that. We dove right in and learned about the process in which natural ink is extracted from the jagua fruit and used artisticly on the body from head to toe (Click here for the video we watched together.). Everyone got to practice painting geometric, Indigenous, or silly cartoon symbols and images on their or their friend’s body. Kids and adults learned the next day that la jagua is not very forgiving and will magically reappear any markings you thought you erased with your hands. lol! While we circled around tatooing ourselves and one another, I passed around camandula seeds that our ancestors wore as beads for spiritual protection and connection. Seeds I have worn on my body and never knew their significance nor their origin! We sprayed alcoholado and talked about the plants my abulea and so many other grandmothers used to make home made medicine for body aches and pains. Needless to say it was so much fun and so deeply gratifying to share the stories and information I once felt anger and resentment for not knowing or being taught. And while my own children preferred I do most of the talking, it was so beautiful to see them jump in and add to the culture sharing with such confidence and joy. A confidence I didn’t have the opportunity to build during my schooling days at their age, because I didn’t have teachers who centered culture sharing in authentic, non-tokenizing ways. So, instead of being made to feel proud of my heritage, I felt shame and disempowered to advocate for learning opportunities that would allow me to explore more about myself and culture.

And THIS is why culture sharing is so important! Addys Castillo, M.S., MPA , recently told me in a conversation we had about race and equity… 

“Culture sharing is when we get to see each other’s humanity. You don’t have justice without humanity and you cannot have humanity without culture.”

Tips on Culture Sharing

Here are a few things to consider when engaging in culture sharing:

1. Only those that belong to the cultural group being talked about should be doing the sharing. Traditional schooling will make you believe that the teachers should be the ones teaching all the things including teaching kids about cultures they have no personal experience or practice. Wrong. The only experts of a culture are the people from that culture.
2. White faciliators/educators should not shy away from culture sharing. I have heard white teachers tell me that they “don’t have culture.” That isn’t actually true. For the families of many white folx, trading in their culture for American Whiteness is what gave them access to power as newcomers into this country. But white people were not always colonizers. Culture sharing provides white educators an opportunity to investigate and uncover who their Indigenous ancestors were prior to colonization. This deeper level of culture sharing (moving beyond celebrating food, fashion, and festivities), is where the human connection happens and where conversations around justice and liberation occur. 
3. Don’t force culture sharing. Allow it to occur naturally. Youth are always culture sharing. The problem is that adults don’t always see it. Your job is to observe how young people are naturally engaging in cultural exchange and support them in expanding their critical thinking about how they think of themselves and others. This doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions or provide prompts to ignite a conversation or investigation, but it does mean you need to back off if your learners are not feeling it at the moment. No one learns best under coercive conditions.
4. Culture sharing should be a regular, fun, and organic practice in your learning space. You don’t need a fancy lesson plan or curriculum. This isn’t about lecturing or making people share only the things that can be accounted for or cited in books and studies. This is about exchanging stories and experiences and keeping alive ancestral wisdom.  Allow the art of story telling to facilitate the culture sharing and follow where it takes you and your learners. You’ll be surprised what kinds of new discoveries, skill practice and development organically take shape. Most human beings are innately connected to stories and hands-on practice and exploration. This is what makes the learning experience fun and highly engaging. Also, it is through this exchange that culture is practiced, evolved, and kept alive. 

What about you? What does culture sharing look like in your learning space? If it’s not happening, what is keeping it from occurring?