The Memorial Acte

We went to the Memorial ACTe Museum in Pointe-A-Pitre last week. This museum tells the history of slavery in the Caribbean Islands through narration, artifacts and art. Phenomenal place. 

I want to tell you about The Tree of Forgetting  installation I saw there, by Pascale Marthine Tayou.  Here's a photo.  I had never heard of the original Tree of Forgetting's place in history.  I've been reading more about it.  Here's a description:

The Dahomey kings were known to employ magic to help their trades and as such, along the slave trails were left different elements given supernatural powers to help them in their evil business. The first stop along the slave trail of Ouidah contains such an element. Europeans desired slaves whose memory would be wiped clean of any remembrance of their culture, family and homeland. The kings were afraid that, if slaves knew were they came from, they would be able to flee and come back to their lands so a magical tree was used to allegedly make them forget all of that. Men were asked to turn around the tree nine times and women seven, after which it was said the magic of the tree would make them forget all their ties to the land they were pushed away from.    From https://www.youngpioneertours.com/slave-trail-benin/

I doubt anyone fell for this trick, but good try, slavetraders.  

As you know, we're dealing with our own kind of Tree of Forgetting in the here and now, with states passing laws left and right that aim to control what teachers can say about where we come from and where we are together today. Like the slavetraders of yore, these lawmakers and their supporters are fearful of liberty and justice for all. 

Their laws may represent a walk around the tree, but I doubt most of us will fall for these shameful tricks in the long run.   Memorial ACTe is a Site of Conscience.  Our classrooms are also Sites of Conscience.  You should definitely go to this museum if you want to.