All traditional spiritual systems include some form of ancestor veneration. It’s different from praying to ancestors—it’s about respecting and acknowledging them. Even if someone doesn’t believe ancestors actively influence our lives, the idea of respecting those who came before us is universal.
When we consider our ancestors’ presence in our DNA, their struggles and victories become a part of who we are. Honouring them empowers us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We often use phrases like, “Your grandmother would turn in her grave,” without thinking about what they really mean. It suggests that we instinctively understand that our ancestors remain connected to us in some way.
Simple Ways to Honour Our Ancestors
How can people practically venerate their ancestors?
There are so many ways! Let’s start with the simplest ones and go to some more complicated ways:
- Create an Ancestral Shrine: Many people may already have a kind of shrine without realizing it. A lot of our grandparents have pictures of those that died in a special place – that’s a shrine. You can set aside a small space in your home and put some flowers there, or a candle along with images of ancestors, and a glass of clean water for them. Speak Their Names: A powerful and simple practice is to say their names aloud. There’s an old saying that if we don’t speak of our dead, they die twice. Make sure your children know their names, and their stories. If you have images, show them pictures so they have ideas of who these people are and where they’ve come from. That empowers us on a different level because it tells us they went through these things. They survived. They overcame.
- Remember them with Empowering Ritual Phrases: In different Ifá and Orisha traditions, we say certain phrases after an ancestor’s name to empower them. For example, in Cuban practice, we say Ibaye Baye Ontonu or Kinkamashi in Trinidad after calling an ancestor’s name. It’s like saying, “Go get ‘em, Grandma! We got you, you got us!” For example, my maternal grandmother is Alberta Cox Belgrave. We can say Alberta Cox Belgrave, Ibaye Baye Ontonu or Alberta Cox Belgrave, Kinkamashi.
- Leave Offerings: If your ancestor loved coffee, pour a small cup for them. If they had a favourite food, set aside a small portion before adding salt (since salt was historically used against freedom fighters). These small gestures acknowledge their presence.
- Pour Libations: Many Caribbean people instinctively pour a bit of alcohol on the ground before drinking, saying, “For the spirits.” That’s an ancestral tradition. Our ancestors were people too; they liked to have fun, and remembering them in our joy and in our celebration keeps them close.
What Do we lose if we don’t remember them?
To consider the inverse of why should we honour our ancestors, let me ask this—what do we lose if we don’t remember them?
That’s a sad question. We lose ourselves. We lose our future. There’s a Ghanaian symbol called Sankofa— It looks like a bird whose head is facing backwards, while it’s moving forward. And it means that we have to go back and get it. You have to know where you are coming from if you have any hope of getting to where you want to go.
Without the historical contextualization, we really don’t understand why we are, where we are, who we are, how we are, so that we can make decisions about who we become, to avoid the errors of the past.
Without ancestor veneration, as the old people would say, we are ‘spinning top in mud’. We are going nowhere and getting dirty doing it–busy and tired but going absolutely nowhere. So many of our ancestors fought for our survival. If we ignore them, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past and losing the wisdom they left behind.
Without ancestor veneration, we have lost one of our main paths to connect with the spiritual world and to be guided and protected by the spiritual realm. Who’s going to pray for you harder than your grandparents? Who’s going to intercede for you more than your blood? We’d lose a lot of strength, a lot of power, a lot of safety, a lot of wisdom. But it’s there in our DNA to tap into.
The Loss of Ancestral Lineage
One of the great losses of the Middle Passage and the enslavement of our people is the erasure of our ancestral lineage. Very few of us can trace our roots back across the Atlantic. If we can name even three or four generations, we are lucky. First names, the surnames, origins, professions, ages, of birth, dates of death… we’ve lost that.
Records of enslaved people offer little help, as the destruction of our names was central to stripping us of our personhood. So, we have to build our ancestral lineage with whatever we can gather now and pass that on to our children so that they can continue to build as well. Because the longer the lineage, the more powerful your veneration and the impact.
Venerating Ancestors by Seeking Reparations
How does the act of honouring and remembering our ancestors connect to the present-day call for reparation and repair?
The fight for justice didn’t start with us. Our ancestors resisted, fought, and died for our freedom. The sacrifices that were made, the fights that were fought by the Egun, whose names we may never be able to recollect, demand that they are honoured. We have to honour their fight by demanding and receiving justice in their names for their children. We have a responsibility to them. Our blood is going to continue to call out until justice is served and received.
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