Settler colonialism and coloniality dominate and dismember the truths, the bodies, and the lands of the colonized. Decolonization and decoloniality involve intergenerational, embodied, and emplaced pathways of resistance, rehumanization, healing, and transformation. In this article, we uplift the healing and transformative power of transnational stories and embodied knowledges that are rooted in four research collectives: the Palestinian Resilience Research Collective (PRRC) in the West Bank; the Mapuche Equipo Colaborativo para la Investigación de la Resiliencia (MECIR) in Chile; the Community Action Team (CAT) in Boston, USA; and the Miya Community Research Collective (MCRC) in Assam, Northeast India. We, the co-authors of this article, are directly connected to these four research collectives. Across our collectives, we work to defend the right to exist, to belong, and to express our full range of humanity as racialized and colonized communities in distinct, yet connected, sites of struggle. Our transnational focus of this article is premised on a fundamental rejection of borders, even as we recognize the material and psychosocial realities of borders. In co-writing this article, we bring decolonial solidarity into life through “constellations of co-resistance,” a concept used by Indigenous scholars such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson to describe complex connective fabrics across decolonial struggles. We share our reflections on three practices of decolonial solidarity that shine through each of our transnational research collectives as three constellations of co-resistance: counterstorytelling, interweaving struggles, and decolonial love.
We, two Palestinians in the Diaspora, have come together to write this article as an enactment of sumoud صمود (perseverance in Arabic). We write for enduring being in the face of ongoing capture and colonization of our communities, lands, truths, hearts, and minds. In this article, we share our critical reflections on the decolonial teachings and praxis of Palestinian psychologist Dr. Ibrahim Makkawi, who we lost to cancer on February 9, 2022. Throughout this article, we share our critical insights into our work guided and inspired by Makkawi. We reflect on his legacy while sharing stories from our own personal journeys in contesting colonial violence in our research, writing, community work, healing practice, organizing, teaching, learning, and clinical supervision. We share insights into decolonial states of being as tunnels that Makkawi dreamed into existence within his life’s work. In Makkawi’s legacy, we tether together our personal stories with the precious narratives of two of our colleagues in colonized Palestine who continue Makkawi’s work in their everyday enactments and decolonial healing and resistance.
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