Feminist Founders Subscriber-Only Podcast

Welcome to the Feminist Founders audio series event. This is a bonus for paid subscribers of the feminist Founders's newsletter. So if you're here, thank you so much for your support. I am so excited to bring to you in this series, some incredible thought leaders who are going to share insights about doing business differently in a way that honors equity and social justice. I hope that you learned so much from this. Let's dig in.

Becky Mollenkamp: Hello, I am so excited to introduce you to Ixchel Lunar. Maybe you already know them, maybe you don't, but I was so thrilled when they agreed to be a part of this. I've known Ixchel now for, I don't know, a few months, and I'm so impressed by them and the work that they're doing, most especially and as we talk about here around decolonizing time, because I just think that is so incredibly important. Ixchel is a writer and coach and guide, and speaking of writer, Ixchel’s Substack is called Dragon Letters from Ixchel Lunar which I will link to, and I hope that you will subscribe. I think you're gonna really enjoy this, it was just such a great conversation about decolonizing time and something that'll get you with, hopefully will provoke some interesting thoughts for you. So I hope that you enjoy this and I will catch you on the end.
Becky Mollenkamp: Hello, Ixchel. I am so thrilled to be chatting with you about time because I think the most precious resource we have is time, or at least that's what we're always told. And I'm interested to learn if that is actually a a colonized view of time or a decolonized view of time, but I think we should start off by getting on the same page around language because I think that's always helpful. And when we talk about decolonization, it's something that I think people hear a lot, but I don't know that everyone has a real understanding of what that means, and it may mean different things for different people, perhaps. So if you could start by just telling me what when you talk about decolonization, whether it's around time or anything else, just when you think of that phrase or that word decolonization, what does it mean to you?
Ixchel Lunar: So this is such a great question, and I love that you're starting with vocabulary because it's so important when we're doing this work to really be clear about what it is we're talking about. And for myself, I always love to start with decolonizing and what it means to decolonize and what is colonialism. And the way that I do that is to really kind of simplify it as best as possible so that it lands easier in the body. Because I see a lot of folks when we are talking about decolonizing folks that aren't familiar with anti-racism work or land back movements or white supremacy culture or anything like that when they hear decolonization, there's usually sort of a somatic bracing that takes place, and I'm really wanting to help people move through that so that they can start to do this work from the body and in a very embodied way. So when I talk about decolonizing and colonization. First, I'd like to start with colonization, which for me, in the simplest terms, is the separation of people from the land and separation from each other. So we think about one of the ways that that's still occurring today is that the displacement and the diaspora of many indigenous people having to leave their land and move to other locations, become refugees, seek asylum, get separated at borders, all of that, that's a continuation of colonization. in a very simplistic way of looking at it. But the other piece that is really the most fundamental piece of colonization is separating people from the land, so taking people off of the lands that they are indigenous to, that they're from, and forcing them to live in other situations where they aren't resourced, where they don't have access to food and water naturally, that we all humans should have access to naturally to be to grow our own food and drink clean water and breathe clean air. These are all things that we've had for millions of years as creatures living on this planet and it was through colonization that that fundamentally shifted. There were, of course, political movements that happened in Europe that sort of controlled people's access to the land that were sort of precursors to the bigger globalization of colonization that we think of today. And so, decolonizing is to repair those relationships of separation, and to, to bring people together again to bring people back to the land again in various different ways, and the work that I do around decolonizing is to really help people to repair their relationships with the world around them, with the land, with the people around them, etc. And so in a, in a very simplest sense, it's, it's quite easy to actually start decolonizing we can do that by just getting connected with the world around us wherever we are and start to observe and notice and connect with the world around us, whether you live in the concrete jungle, you live in a high rise, you can watch the way the light and the the clouds or not clouds at wind even are just moving through the space that you're in through an open window or even a closed window to if you have access to land, you live on a piece of property that has some sort of flora and fauna and you can find a spot that you can sit in and and just observe and be with the the world around you on a day to day basis. To start to connect with those natural cyclical patterns that are very hallmark to more befriended time or decolonial time relationship versus colonial time, which has a whole construct that we can chat about.
Becky Mollenkamp: Perfect. You took me right to where I would want to go next, which is trying to understand how time has been colonized. Before we get into decolonizing time specifically, although you started to get at that at the end of what you're sharing there, but I want to go in more depth. But before we go there, let's talk about the ways that time has been colonized, and are there differences for different folks, depending on marginalizations or privileges as to how their time has been colonized?
Ixchel Lunar: I generally like to lay out the colonization of time in 5 ways so that we can kind of start to see how systematic it is. And I would say that the first way that time has been colonized is that it's been stolen. And this comes from Dr. Brittney Cooper on her TED talk on the racial politics of time and so the idea of stolen time applies mostly to Indigenous and especially Black people in that as Dr. Brittney Cooper lays it out. Time has been stolen in that especially Black people have been basically erased from history and that the oppressions and the slavery and the systematic oppressions that they have gone through, their life expectancy and their health and all of these things that we equate with our life and time. And I would say that in exploring that TED talk, I would also recommend beginning to explore Afrofuturism as the response to stolen time and the way that that movement, both in art and writing Janelle Monae is one that has written some Afrofuturist work, and then other artists and creatives out there doing just really incredible, beautiful work on Afrofuturism. So that would be stolen time. The next is divided and perfected and this is really that very practical way that in colonial, Western living, we have the 24 hour clock, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, the Gregorian calendar, and that all of that has basically set up colonial time so that everyone can get on it instead of when we see an indigenous cultures throughout the world, time it is a very hyperlocal experience and is experienced and perceived differently throughout the planet. So, and we can get into that a little bit more in decolonizing time, but that's just sort of the very simplified thought of how time is divided and perfected. The perfection piece is really important because that gets into the white supremacy characteristic of perfection , and sort of the scient of time, and I say scientism because it's like a, it's a dogma thing around science, not that I'm not into science cause I'm actually have almost majored in physics, but there's a lot of dogma in science as well, and this idea that we have this atomic clock and we can be so absolutely perfect with the concept of time, and yet there's so many problems with that as well in terms of time they actually get back to time being very hyperlocal, having very much to do with place. And then the next way that time is colonized is that it's been outsourced or commodified. So if commodified, outsourced and foreclosed that we're going to get into just shortly. So commodified is this way that really that Nicole Shipham talks about in her book Decolonizing Time, which I always caveat by saying that book isn't about decolonizing, it's about the politics of time and really has nothing to do with the land back sort of piece that is essential to decolonizing. So it's I feel like it was more used as a metaphor for the book and Yang and talk, talk about not using decolonization as a metaphor, that it's so essentially tied to the land itself. And so this idea that grew out of the European lords and, and peasants and the way that, Phiom, all of that sort of controlled the land and made it difficult for the peasants to get by. And then that sort of system was brought to the United States and then through the industrialization era really commodified our time, literally that 24/7 and sort of mentality into working for wages. And who, who got paid, what, what gender did what, all of those sort of things are sort of baked into this concept of the politics of time that shipping goes into, I think, very well. It covers a lot of that really well. And then the outsourced concept comes from Tyson Yonaurta and he's known for his book Sam Talk, but I actually heard him in a podcast talk about the outsourcing of time and actually the outsourcing of entropy, and, and I liked that concept because when we think about what we're doing to the planet. He talks about the fact that we're, we're outsourcing. So entropy being one of the laws of thermodynamics, where everything is moving into a burnt state basically, and the universe is cooling because of the state change of matter. And so on this planet, we are definitely state changing, really, really deep levels of time in the use of the planet as resources. When we think about mining in particular, we think about nuclear energy and what that does in terms of the half-life of, of spent uranium and all of those things are basically an outsourcing use of the planet as resources and that when I'm taking a little bit further of outsourcing entropy is that we're outsourcing the time of the planet itself. We're taking away the longevity of the planet by what we're doing to the planet in terms of treating it as a resource. And then the last one comes from foreclosing time comes from Estelle Ellison, and she is really amazing talking about fascism, and what fascism has done to the United States to foreclose time on, on us. So we think about that commodified time and then we go even deeper under fascism, we have these new levels of oppression that so many people are experiencing under classism, under racism that are taking our time from us for closing that time of ours because we have to work so many more jobs because inflation makes our dollars go less far because Gen Xers never had an opportunity to move forward in life and, and have no real future. and because the housing market has been monopolized by corporations and rents are driven to such great extent that requires more working and all of these various levels of oppression that are coming from fascism that are foreclosing our time. So those five ways can really help you to get a sense of how time is colonized. How you are personally impacted by these 5 levels of colonization of time in a way that I hope you will never be able to unsee it.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you so much. That's really fascinating, and I also want to say thank you for citing your teachers. That's so important and sometimes speaking of teachers that I learned from Toi Marie Smith and from Kelly Diels, and love seeing it modeled, so thank you. And everything you shared is such a reminder that everything is political, including time. And I want to talk a little bit about once we see this and can't unsee it, as you mentioned, what we begin to do with the information, but before I do that, I'm wondering if you can tell me if your work and if your approaches look different for folks who are white or racialized as white versus those who are racialized as black, indigenous, or anyone else of the global majority, because I would imagine having oppressor versus marginalized identities or where those overlap and all of that may affect the way you're talking about these things or the work you're doing with folks around time, or maybe it doesn't.
Ixchel Lunar: That's a great question. I don't know if it's if it's explicitly different, the lens that I have being a third-culture kid is really growing up in two very distinct households, lots of mixed marriages in there and seeing the impacts of racism on the people of color the Black, Brown, Indigenous, bodies of color in my family, mostly, I would say on the Indigenous side, though we had very close friends that were Black. So, seeing how racism impacted them, an understanding and an empathy for that because it didn't, it didn't affect me as much being lighter skinned, although I was never within, I would categorize myself as never within the white-bodied group, and this language that I use to speak about racializing comes from Resmaa Menakem and really because that work is so somatic is talking about the way that white supremacy is located within the body. It's in all of us. So, I would say that there's an understanding and an empathy that I have in witnessing what I saw within my family and my friends, I was definitely in mixed-race groups growing up where I lived, we had many cultures actually in downtown Sacramento, and so I think there's probably, there's a certain kind of hat that I don't have to wear when I'm working with Black folks that I still have to wear when I'm working with bi-bodied people in terms of how I understand they're seeing the world and how they're experiencing the world somatically. So a lot of the work that I do is while it's not overt somatics, where we're definitely working with the body and how things feel because the work is relational. And so anytime we get into working in being or becoming more relational, we're working with our bodies and the rest of the world, our bodies and other people that we know our bodies and bodies of knowledge, right? So whenever we're doing that relational work there are activations or triggers as most people know that language. I learned activations from Luis Majica, my somatic facilitator. He is a biracial, intersex human being who really is trying to sort of loosen the gatekeeping around somatics because so much of somatic work is really Indigenous work. It's that relational work. And whereas what what's so frequent in dominator culture is that we have learned to suppress all of our bodily responses and listening and so much of what needs to happen to make imperialist hegemonic patriarchal white supremacist culture function is to suppress bodily needs, bodily responses, listening to our bodies, listening to our bodies' needs, giving consent to ourselves and in the way that we relate with other people. So, I think there's difference is that I'm listening with, depending upon the person, but it always comes back to that relational aspect of like, how are we relating to ourselves and because so much of the decolonizing of time starts with the colonial time that is impacted us in our in the way we relate to our bodies and how much we don't listen to our bodies so that we can cope, so that we can do the million things that we have to do to survive in this fascist imperialistic world that we live in right now. So yeah, I would say that in that respect it's really about listening to where people are to get a sense of how they are relating with themselves so that they can start to relate with themselves better, relate with time in a more friendly way, relate with the land and the world around them, and that all of that ripples out into their relationships and so we do a little bit of somatic work to support finding the safety in the body because so much of the way that we are sort of geared to operate right now is pushing past all of that and operating in one of the 5 Fs—fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and fuck. I think there's a 6th, trying to remember and I can't remember, but I’ll remember it later. So being able to start to come out of those highly aroused states, those activated states and into rest and repair and the rest and repair is where we can really start to do this work. And so there's things that I've learned from Luis around supporting our body with fiber to pull out excess adrenaline because we're just adrenalized bodies living in this culture, always on, and then working with protecting our attention and our dopamine, social media and devices and all of those things. And so a lot of the practices that I bring to people are pretty widely accessible and then there's, I think a relational point around the different folks that I work with and the perspectives that I hold.
Becky Mollenkamp: We could probably talk forever, Ixchel, about this because I'm endlessly fascinated, but I want to honor everyone's time speaking of time, because you've already given so much of your time and your responses. So to wrap up, I'm hoping that maybe you can share a tip or a journaling prompt or a thought exercise or some sort of takeaway for people who want to decolonize their own relationship with time. What do you want to leave people with that can help them just sort of a beginning place of that journey.
Ixchel Lunar: Yeah, so the place that I start with folks around decolonizing time is really to help them to be able to see time as an entity and as a friend. This comes from my Mayan tradition, the Mayan calendar, the Haab or the Tzolk’in calendar, which is a calendar in the round that represents the lunar cycle. It's basically working with 20 energies kind of like we have 12 zodiac signs in astrology. There's 2 energies of the day that are basic characteristics of the quality of time. It's in a very hyperlocal way. So the energy of the day is experienced in the world around us, like literally in the world around us and that experience can best be felt when we connect with the world, especially the outside world around us. It shows up in relationships as well. And so it's not to say that you can't experience it inside, but I find that when people get into a place of having a sit spot somewhere where they can go on a day to day basis, whether it be on your own land or in a park, or if you're in a high rise looking out the window, but basically sort of connecting with the same area throughout the seasons, throughout the year on a day to day basis if possible. And really taking on an observational lens of just witnessing the world, connecting with the world, watching what's happening with the world around you as you go through the seasons and then you start to understand that cyclical way of time and that spiral way of time that exists in indigenous ways of being. So the Mayan calendar is one way to do that to track the energy of the day and start to notice if on a particular day, you sense that energy, that quality, that characteristic of time, but you don't need the Mayan calendar to do that. It's something that you can just do on your own, find that sit spot and take a few minutes each day to observe and connect with the energy to notice how you feel. And that starts to disrupt the clock. The clock time is so controlling over our lives in terms of how our pace is and when we can start to deconstruct that and reconnect with the world around us, then we're able to really experience that more cyclical way of being, start to reconnect with our own pace and our own sense of time. Everybody sort of has their own sense of time as well in terms of how they experience time and the world around them too. So I think that's more prominent for neuro-emergent or neurodivergent folks like myself, and so, that's one way that a person can start to shift that relationship of time. And one thing that comes up when we do that is this desire to sort of step into decolonial time or spiral time, cyclical time, and step out of colonial time and it produces an anxiety because once you start to feel that space, you want more of it, and yet we all live in colonial ways and it's hard to step out of and what I like to tell people when they start to experience that anxiety or even start to have object objections before starting to do this work is that it took us 500, 600 years to get to where we are with colonial ways of being and the generations that we're in from, I would say probably the 60s and beyond, and which were sort of in this continuum of generations that are shifting back towards these more traditional ecological knowledge or epistemology, indigenous epistemologies are going to take many generations. You hear about the 7 generations kind of philosophy, but to actually shift a culture from one way to another can take as, as much as 14 generations to really completely heal the the wounds and the repair that needs to happen to let go of these colonial ways. So it sort of helps us to have that deeper sense of time and that continuum that we're in, to think of it as we are one generation among many who can do these shifts, and the more we can do that, then the easier and better the repair will be for the world around us. And, and many of these practices are things that I include in the daily practices and prompts in the time weavers subscription creativity subscription, which are really to help people to get reconnected and to do that repair work and start to open up their senses again to the world around them, because colonial time has really dampened so many of our senses. So I hope that helps for people that have been listening to sort of start to to to see the colonial ways that time has been colonized and then to start to notice the world around you, and then be able to start to awaken those senses, so that creativity can become more accessible and so that the work that you do in the world has greater impact.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you so much for that and for your time and for your wisdom and help with this audio series. I really, really appreciate you, Ixchel. Can you close by telling everyone where they can find you and connect with you. Obviously, I will link to your Substack, but if there's anywhere else that people can connect with you to learn more about you and your work, I will hope you share that with us.
Ixchel Lunar: My substack is a great read. It's available and it's called Dragon Letters and I post usually twice a month for that, long-form articles and tidbits that I find really interesting around decolonization. I call it your dose of decolonization. And then my website decolonizingtime.com is a repository of my story, my background, the work that I do in the world, and also, I think it's also representative of a way that we can do marketing and outreach in an anti-colonial way as well, really working around Kelly Diels’ Copywriting for Culturemakers and my decolonial methods as well. So folks can drop in there and get a sense for what that feels like, too. Thank you so much, Becky, and to everybody in the collective, really appreciate getting to know everyone.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thanks again to Ishel for being part of this, and to you for listening and for being a paid subscriber. I hope this episode was really hopeful for you and I can't wait to bring you yet another incredible conversation tomorrow.