How does Kavaya actively reject white supremacy culture and the Four I's of Oppression. How do you color outside the lines?
After immersing myself in Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower," I was prompted to critically examine the environmental landscape at Georgetown University. I questioned the prevalent lack of diversity in the voices and faces of environmentalism, despite their profound connection to the land through ancestral knowledge and being those most affected by environmental crises. Recognizing this disconnect among students, staff, and faculty of color who shared a passion for environmentalism, I took the initiative to establish Kavaya: The Earthseed Collective at Georgetown.
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Kavaya: The Earthseed Collective means, a multi-generational collective for Georgetown University students, staff, alumni, and faculty of the global majority to explore space, sustainability, and self. Kavaya was founded in response to interpersonal and institutional oppression at Georgetown University, a PWI (Predominantly White Institution). The authority, capital, and expertise of environmental stewardship has been historically bestowed to the white and wealthy despite the Global Majority’s ancient and ever-present connection to the land – as a site of their oppression and triumph. By age, Kavaya’s oldest member is 70 and youngest is 17, the beauty of our leader-full multi-generational community feels like the circles on the bark of a tree, challenging the vertical, hierarchical, rigid, exclusive spaces on Georgetown University’s campus.
Kavaya is a word meaning circle in Sinhala, my mother language. A word resembling kaavya (poetry or lyrical music) and kavya (sending a message through a messenger). We sit in the beautiful duality of using language to decolonize language, including recognizing the expansiveness of the world’s ways of communicating and how that relates to accessibility. Over the last year, our community has embodied these ideas – of offering, sharing, conversing, and gifting in a generous, circular way. In-person activations and exhibitions are foundational to thinking beyond the English language and other western logocentric ways of expressing. Kavaya has and will continue to sing, dance, chant, and play, challenging linear, colonial, ideological oppression.
Since Kavaya’s founding, we have been intentional with our language. Kavaya is a collective for the Global Majority. By this, we mean Kavaya is a space for people who are Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, dual-heritage, multi-ethnic, and/or with an ancestral connection to the Global South. We are a group consisting of what some have called "ethnic minorities." But we are not a minority. We are the majority. And there is power in challenging our internalized oppression and the normative vocabulary that marginalizes our ways of thinking and lived experiences.
The collective aspires to transcend one university, evolving into a global pulse for environmental literature and edutainment. Kavaya Press is our organic next step, a slow publishing house that aims to rewrite the narrative of environmental justice through Global Majority perspectives. We seek to make cultivating healthy relationships with local places and the global planet as accessible as possible. In contrast to historically white media, publishing, and education industries, Kavaya Press endeavors to foster solidarity, conspire with the environment, and empower individuals through art spanning poetry, prose, photography, and plays. Kavaya Press is one iteration of Kavaya’s potential, already having grown from book club to affinity space, from reading-centered to creating-centered, from including non-global majority members to transitioning their roles to allies and supporters. We reject both the pressure of perfectionism and urgency. Despite being a community of over 20 active members in just a year we welcome the boldness of our ideas alongside the gentleness of our growth as an organization.
We recognize that conflict is a spiritual part of growth – growing pains. Kavaya has come together out of common belonging to the Global Majority and care for Mother Nature; it is also vibrant and brings together people from all years, stories, and ancestral walks. So we’ve asked: how can we co-exist with one another even when we disagree? How can we call each other in when we feel offended or hurt by another member of the community? How can we practice deep and embodied listening? Discomfort is a natural part of the world. Mother Nature herself can make you feel unfamiliar, scared, off-kilter, or spooked. Similarly, in our Gatherings as a group, through our discussions of literature, it is natural for us to experience discomfort, and some of us already have — for example, confronting relational boundaries between students, staff, and alumni, or how we choose to gather socially.
Through art, dialogue, and safe spaces we grow and rewild through oppressive spaces and intergenerational curses that are characteristics of white supremacy (e.g. right to comfort, fear of open conflict, defensiveness, individualism, paternalism, and power hoarding). Each member of the collective is empowered as a leader – to take responsibility for one another, organize gatherings, lead book discussions, host meals, and more. We iterate that as founders we are here to offer guidance not permission. However, we also recognize that leadership is labor which is why fiscal sponsorship is particularly crucial. So that we can pay Hasini Shyamsundar (recent alum, grad student, staff) for not only their countless beautiful graphics such as this one, but their time and energy in sending and replying to emails and their tea supplies. So that we can pay Ollie Henry (senior) for their yoga and movement classes, Kendall Bryant (recent alum) for their event performances, Sivagami Subbaraman’s consultation (faculty) from her 30 years of experience in higher education, Madhura Shambekar’s (sophomore) journalism, and Mélisande Short-Colomb’s (GU272 descendant, student, staff) cooking.
In conclusion, Kavaya: The Earthseed Collective is a living testament to the transformative power of unity, resilience, and intentional action. From its roots in Georgetown University, this multi-generational community challenges the status quo, embracing a leader-full model that defies hierarchy. Through intentional language reclamation and the creation of Kavaya Press, we have set forth on a global journey to rewrite the narrative of environmental justice from Global Majority perspectives. As Kavaya continues to navigate conflicts with grace, embracing discomfort as an essential part of growth, it serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration. In a world often marked by division, Kavaya stands as a shining example of how collective empowerment, inclusive leadership, and a commitment to change can pave the way for a more harmonious and just future.
