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Margaret Mitchell Armand presents a cutting edge interdisciplinary terrain inside an indigenous exploration of her homeland. Her contribution to the historiography of Haïtian Vodou demonstrates the struggle for its recognition in Haïti’s post-independence phase as well as its continued misunderstanding. Through a methodological, original study of the colonial culture of slavery and its dehumanization, Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Traditions examines the sociocultural and economic oppression stemming from the local and international derived politics and religious economic oppression.
While concentrating the narratives on stories of indigenous elites educated in the western traditions, Armand moves pass the variables of race to locate the historical conjuncture at the root of the persistent Haïtian national division. Supported by scholarships of indigenous studies and current analysis, she elucidates how a false consciousness can be overcome to reclaim cultural identity and pride, and include a sociocultural, national educational program, and political platform that embraces traditional needs in a global context of mutual respect. While shredding the western adages, and within an indigenous model of understanding, this book purposefully brings forth the struggle of the African people in Haïti.
Margaret Mitchell Armand presents a cutting edge interdisciplinary terrain inside an indigenous exploration of her homeland. Her contribution to the historiography of Haïtian Vodou demonstrates the struggle for its recognition in Haïti’s post-independence phase as well as its continued misunderstanding. Through a methodological, original study of the colonial culture of slavery and its dehumanization, Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Traditions examines the sociocultural and economic oppression stemming from the local and international derived politics and religious economic oppression.
While concentrating the narratives on stories of indigenous elites educated in the western traditions, Armand moves pass the variables of race to locate the historical conjuncture at the root of the persistent Haïtian national division. Supported by scholarships of indigenous studies and current analysis, she elucidates how a false consciousness can be overcome to reclaim cultural identity and pride, and include a sociocultural, national educational program, and political platform that embraces traditional needs in a global context of mutual respect. While shredding the western adages, and within an indigenous model of understanding, this book purposefully brings forth the struggle of the African people in Haïti.
Introduction: Mèt Kafou: Master of the Crossroads
Chapter 1: Loko Atisou: The Power of Knowing
Chapter 2: Lenglensou: The Architects of the Inferno and the
Victims
Chapter 3: The Audacity of Faith Keeps the Drums Beating
Chapter 4: The Poto Mitan of Decolonization: The Healing
Process
Chapter 5: Gran Bwa: The Power of a Single Story, Part I
Chapter 6: Azaka Mede: The Power of a Single Story, Part II
Chapter 7: Milokan: United We Are in the Realms of the Lwas
Epilogue: The Gedes
Margaret Mitchell Armand was born and raised in Haïti. A graduate of the University of Texas in Psychology, she also earned a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Nova Southeastern University, a MA and licensure in mental health counseling and Certified Family Mediator. Her scholarship addresses transformative conflict resolution, historical and cultural studies. She has taught as a visiting professor at national and international universities and published in scholarly books and journal. She traveled extensively to indigenous communities in many parts of the world, including Africa, India, and the Caribbean. She is an artist and poet whose activism promotes dignity, self-respect, and social equity for all.
Armand offers the first study of which . . . focus[es] on what she
designates as the social (and racial) class/es of the
'Affranchi/bourgeois/elite,' and their often extremely private
and/or secretive commitment to Vodou values. . . .Armand’s book
resonates with Madelaine Hron’s work on storytelling and healing;
Ren´e Lemarchand’s claims on the importance of 'reckoning' in the
reconciliation process; and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith’s and Claudine
Michel’s scholarship on the contemporariness of Vodou as a means to
negotiate a new world order. For those readers unfamiliar with
Vodou and working professionally with Haitian clients, the book is
a thorough and concise introduction to a Vodou way-of-being; and
for 'Haitianists,' Armand’s book. . . .offers a courageously
self-reflexive look at the role of the elite, both historically and
in the present, in edifying Haiti through a mise-en-oeuvre of a
Vodou philosophy.
*Nova Religio: The Journal Of Alternative And Emergent
Religions*
Margaret Mitchell Armand’s seminal work demonstrates the necessity
for continued scientific research on the legacy of the Taínos in
order to showcase, to the rest of the World, the knowledge
that the people of the Caribbean wanted to transmit to
the conquistadors at the end of the fifteenth century for the good
of humanity.
*Ginette Pérodin Mathurin, Senior Researcher and Coordinator,
Haïtian Indigenous Research Center*
Healing in the Homeland is a compelling Haitian story of conflict
resolution and of decolonization. It is a narrative of the
epistemological, ontological, pedagogical and psychological basis
upon which to recreate and redeem a nation 209 years in the making.
The tasks of creating a sovereign nation and people with a
sovereign imagination and agency, made possible by the most radical
modernizing revolution of the modern age, are not easy, entangled
as they are in Western colonial dysfunctional culture and African
marginality. Dr. Margaret Mitchell Armand, a dispute resolution
specialist, has done well to weave a story of redemption guided by
a conceptual/theoretical lens that is not only Haiti’s but for all
peoples who were mired in colonial dystopia.
*Clinton Hutton, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus,
Jamaica and author of The Logic & Historical Significance of the
Haitian Revolution & the Cosmological Roots of Haitian Freedom*
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