Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind

by Louise Dunlap

An insightful look at the historical damages early colonizers of America caused and how their descendants may recognize and heal the harm done to the earth and the native peoples



Inherited Silence tells the story of beloved land in California's Napa Valley--how the land fared during the onslaught of colonization and how it fares now in the drought, development, and wildfires that are the consequences of the colonial mind. Author Lousie Dunlap's ancestors were among the first Europeans to claim ownership of traditional lands of the Wappo people during a period of genocide. They lived the dream of Manifest Destiny; their consciousness changing only gradually over the generations.

As Dunlap inherited the space from her family, she began to wonder about the unspoken history of the land on which she resided. What kept her ancestors from seeing and telling the truth of their history? What did they bring west with them from the very earliest colonial experience in New England? Dunlap looks back into California's and America's history for the key to their silences and a way to heal the wounds of the land, its original people, and the harmful mind of the colonizer.

It's a powerful story that will awaken others to consider their own ancestors' role in colonization and encourage them to begin reparations for the harmful actions of those who came before. More broadly, it offers a way for every reader to evaluate their own current life actions and the lasting impact they can have on society and our planet.

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Justice

240 pages, Hardcover

Published September 6, 2022

Reviews

[antang · Rating 3 out of 5]

finished in time for bookclub in 2 hrs. my thoughts are that although i couldnt fully relate to some of the sentiments shared by the author (anglo) that the takeaways for ancestral healing and connection to the land (plus all the other action steps she adds at the end) are important and something i need to center in my life, especially as i’ve “transplanted” myself to a land im not familiar with but shares older stories of genocide and pain that need to be acknowledged and healed.

[Cindy Geary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inherited Silence—Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind, by Louise Dunlap (New Village Press, 2022)

Writer/activist Louise Dunlap’s book, Inherited Silence—Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind (New Village Press, 2022) tells the story of her love of family and the land they settled in California’s Napa Valley in the 19th century. She is moved to investigate the story of her family’s acquisition of this land as she becomes increasingly aware of the violent dispossession and genocide of America’s Indigenous people committed by European settlers as they made their way across America. What she discovers is a story of settler colonialism kept silent for generations—her family’s ties to the removal of Wappo and Patwin people from the land where she grew up.

Dunlap describes “colonizer mind” as a “lethal disregard for the Indigenous people and their worldviews, fellow humans who’d evolved with the and knew its ways” (p. 15). It is a consciousness that allows humans to own land, and in otherwise rational people, makes it business as usual to cheat, injure, and murder people who get in the way of possessing land that they want. In the settler worldview, Indigenous people did not know how to use the land productively and didn’t need it anyway. Colonizer mind allowed people to compartmentalize their emotions so that they could believe they were doing extreme harm for the greater good. They could even forget that it happened and made sure to the extent possible that no one else ever knew. It is an attitude that persists when one group of people believe they have some sort of dominion or sovereignty over others. It is not limited to our country, but our country perpetuates it in other colonized countries around the world. It is what keeps certain people under the thumbs of some governments, people who are called “terrorists” when they respond violently because no other form of resistance elicits justice.

Because of the intentional silence and lies embedded in the history most of us learned about the creation of America, we likely have been unaware of how our own ancestors were complicit with Indigenous genocide and removal. We also are likely unaware of the story of the Indigenous people who lived on the land where we currently live.

I appreciate Dunlap’s sensitivity to the trauma the stories she shares carry with them, and the care she takes to prepare the reader for these difficult feelings. She asks the reader to take a quiet moment, a deep breath, and a meditative attitude. Not only was there trauma for the victims, but also for the perpetrators, some of whom were her own kin. She quotes Indigenous therapist Eduardo Duran who says, “the one doing the wounding wounds himself” (p. 233). Dunlap describes how this trauma of colonization is passed down generationally. Repairing the harmful past actions of European settler-colonizer ancestors (of which I am one also), therefore, is not just a nice thing to do, it actually becomes necessary for one’s own physical/emotional/spiritual well-being. Dunlap speaks about her own experience of shame and grief and how she sought to heal from these.

She also provides the reader with comforting news that harmful ancestral actions can be repaired in the present. This work of healing is an act of honoring the people who gave them life, knowing that their past harmful actions that were part of the social world they lived in, and at the same time now knowing the pain they caused that lives on into subsequent generations.

This is a story of Dunlap’s journey, told with authentic, compassionate, self-awareness. It is a love story to the land and to her family and to the Wappo and Patwin, past, present, and future. It connects for the reader the woundedness of human relationships with suffering in our natural environments. Her settler family’s story is set in California, and also covers their initiating experiences in New England before moving westward. It is a call to every American reader of European ancestry, however, to uncover what has been silenced in their families’ histories wherever they settled. And she provides a path for healing and repair for ourselves and others.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't recall now where I recently heard about this author and her book but so glad I did! Touches on so many topics of interest to me (as hard as some of them are to peruse): colonization, indigenous rights, climate change, ecological restoration. I live in Marin, not too far from the area the author is writing about in Napa County, CA.
She discusses really important history of the land that has been in her family's possession for generations. The history that none of us learned growing up.
I also really enjoyed reading all the botanical and ecological discussions and appreciate the authors and others efforts to attempt important restoration of ecosystems that the indigenous peoples had managed for many years.

[Malia Carp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the mindset of this book was really weird at first, but I went to a talk of her’s and I think it’s actually very genuine. A little off putting at best from the non colonizer perspective.