Learning through messy attempts at heart-centered reflective praxis

This article wrestles with the question, How can solidarity work be about the settler and not about the settler at the same time (D'Arcangelis, 2015, p. 268)? The author is a non-Indigenous psychotherapist by training who works with diasporic Maya peoples living in the United States. While confronting state persecution and terror with displaced Maya communities, I grappled with the ways in which my position as a Western-trained social worker contributes to the oppression at the heart of Maya peoples' struggles. Within efforts toward coalition building and world-traveling (Lugones, 2003), a paradox develops in which one's positionality must be interrogated but not centered so that colonial dynamics can be dismantled and Indigenous voices made principal. In this paper, I attempt to make visible the ways in which relational accountability provoked both rupture and growth toward more responsible solidarity work. I do so through the lens of two personal experiences in which interpersonal nuances reflected the larger structural dynamics of colonial dehumanization. I offer what I learned about messy heart-centered work in scholar-activism. By doing so, I add to discourse on how feeling and affect impact political efficacy. The Maya communities with whom I worked offered lessons for aspiring non-Indigenous allies who seek to build a better world which supports the flourishing of Indigenous peoples.