Displacement

    Due to deep histories of prejudice and cultural oppression of Black & Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) individuals in the USA, we see many families today finding themselves in a state of displacement as they are separated from their cultures. Our elders have balanced that fine line of maintaining cultural traditions while also assimilating enough in the United States to avoid additional harassment. However, our elders are not immortal, and for a long time now, cultures have seen that with the loss of their elders, they have also lost valuable elements of their culture like languages, recipes, and traditional knowledge. 
   The COVID-19 pandemic has caused communities to lose their elders, either through isolation or death, at such a fast rate, and with little connection to the greater cultural community to lean on. In a CBS documentary of Coronavirus in the Navajo Nation, they said” our elders are our teachers, our protectors, our providers”. In losing many elders to COVID, they were suddenly also losing a language, a culture. The Navajo people interviewed stressed the importance of protecting the elders during this pandemic in order to reduce deaths and loss of a way of life. 
   In this era where individuals are now feeling more empowered to embrace their cultural identities instead of hiding them, being able to lean on elders and their base of knowledge is irreplaceable. This loss is challenging communities to do everything in their power to prevent the knowledge of their elders from dying too.
   In losing my grandma this last year, we realized we had not written many of her recipes and it was important for my siblings and cousins to try to gather the things we remembered when cooking with grandma in order to “save” our favorite dishes and recreate them in our own households.
    An NPR interview called “Coronavirus Pandemic Affects Traditional Tamale Season On U.S.-Mexico Border”, examines how the pandemic had affected tamale making in many households. Because of quarantine, illness, and death of many elders, many families were realizing they didn't know how to make traditional tamales. People were waiting in long lines to order tamales from restaurants. Some were calling these restaurants for recipes so they could try making them at home. Families identified the importance and the obvious absence when they lose “the keepers of the recipes”.