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 Remembering Our Purpose
An Interview with Malidoma
Somé
By Sarah van Gilder
There was a time when all people were indigenous
people on some part of the Earth. But in the last half of the millennium, the
migration of people from region to region and from countryside to city broke
many of the ties we used to have to one another and to the land and water that
supported us.
Those who didn’t make that move, the indigenous
peoples of the world, can help us remember what it’s like to be connected to
the environment and to each other in a community. This is valuable not because
we would necessarily want to return to the way we used to live, but because
facets of that connectedness can contribute greatly as we create a sustainable
way of life.
One person who is helping the people of the West
better understand what indigenous cultures have to offer is Malidoma Somé from
the Dagara tribe in the Burkina Faso region of West Africa.
Malidoma, born in 1956, was taken from his family
at the age of five by missionaries and sent to a Jesuit boarding school. When at
the age of 20 he returned to Dano, his village, he was unable to speak his
native tongue, unlearned in the ways of his people, and only his mother
recognized him. He was filled with contempt and anger toward the Jesuits for the
treatment he had received at their hands, and toward his village for handing him
away.
 Determined to spiritually and emotionally
reconnect with his tribe, Malidoma urged the village elders to allow him to
undergo the arduous process of initiation, a rite of passage usually undertaken
at a much earlier age.
After much consideration, they agreed. Malidoma
passed the six-week long ordeal and was enthusiastically welcomed back into the
tribe. He later went on to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he earned a doctorate in
political science, and Brandeis University in Boston, where he received a Ph.D.
in literature.
He now writes and speaks about the lessons of the
indigenous world, and leads workshops for men, and for men and women, on
initiation, ritual, and healing.
 Sarah: From what I’ve heard of your life as a
child, you’ve had some very negative experiences at the hands of Europeans.
Malidoma: Oh, absolutely…
Sarah: And yet you don’t seem to hold any
bitterness now.
Malidoma: Well, it would be an exaggeration to say
that I don’t hold any bitterness, but the process that my own culture allowed
me to go through released a lot of disastrous anger.
Sarah: What was it that helped you get over that
anger and bitterness?
Malidoma: The principal present my culture provided me was
a much greater sense of my own identity, an identity that was not defined, but
rather remembered. It provided me a much greater trust in myself, a greater hope
for a future, and a very grounded walk in my day-to-day life that does not have
to wait for outside affirmation.
My name, Malidoma, means to seek friendship with
strangers. My elders told me, as long as I do what I am destined to do — that
is, to be a kind of linking agent between cultures — I don’t have to worry
about where to find the words or where to find the meaning to convey to an
audience.
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