Decolonization….I Want More
By Sankofie | Published | No Comments
I am finding the word ‘decolonization’ to be a deficient word to describe where and how we must be when we return to our own identity and trajectory as Jamaican African people. Our initial trajectory was interrupted at a certain point. With that interruption we have had certain experiences that may or may not have been in ‘our stars.’ Through that interruption we have learned some very serious lessons that have shaped us into who we are not, and for some of us, who we are refusing to become. We now recognize the need to return to our own path, our own trajectory but certainly we cannot just return to the point of interruption as if nothing had happened, which to me, is what the word decolonization seems to suggests. A mere dismantling
The meaning of the word seems to be limited to simply removing the colonizer but not the colonizing, returning to the point of the interruption, seeming not to go beyond thoughts of dismantling colonial impacts and structures and still having our agency defined as a function of colonial determination. Decolonization, as I hear it today, centres the colonizers and does not suggest to me, a progress that has propelled us ahead of the point of interruption. The word does not provide for us to rejoin and continue on our initial African, indigenous and other trajectories in a transformed way but seems to limit us to who we were at the point of interruption and nothing more.
So what am I looking for? I am looking for a word that allow us to return to our paths but somewhere forward of the point of interruption, that recognize the disruption and what has been learned through and from it. A word that puts people/s and the responsibility to self determine as the focal point of the summation of a restoration, a healing, a repair, a renewal, a reconciliation, a sanctification. Both Jamaica and Africa, where the interruptions occurred, are still suffering enduring, profound dislocation from the conquest of mind, body, spirit which colonization occasioned. I need a word that removes our identity, existence beyond the ambit of the colonizers. Instead of ‘reactively’ decolonizing I need a proactive word like ‘recentrifying,’ so I made it up, from the verb ‘recentrify’ which I also made up and define as:
Recentrify
- Focus human beings as the focal point and at the centre of their own existence
- Heal, restore, renew, reconcile, sanctify by returning to center
- Purify distortions and re – align time, space, and spirit with cosmic equilibrium
Recentrifying
- The active process of centering through self determination
- To heal, repair, and restore by returning to the center of balance
- Removing distortions of meanings and manifestations and aligning them in ancestral balance
- Coming into wholesomeness, well-being and harmony through individually and collectively recentering
Decolonization is not enough. We are stepping beyond it. We are ‘recentrifying’ our existence in ancestral balance—restoring, healing, sanctifying, carrying scar and wisdom into a future we define. Our task is ‘Recentrification.’
Just a thought
July 16, 2026
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