We, Healing Justice Santa Barbara, prepared the following visual Black history timeline on the traditional, ancestral, and unseeded territory of the Chumash on which we are organizing today. As a Black-led and centered group, we deeply understand the ways that capitalism has succeeded by exploiting the labor of Black bodies; so too have these harmful systems benefited from obscuring the existence of Indigenous people because by doing so those aligned with colonialism can feel less conflicted about laying claim to land and resources which are not theirs.

Our words and actions matter. It is not enough to point to public statements that repeat the values of diversity and inclusion. Instead, we must interrogate and actively respond to our own complicity in the oppression of others. Our communities are deserving of more, and so as a collective of stolen people organizing on stolen land, we fully support our Chumash siblings Fin pushing for Indigenous reparations and sovereignty.

Part of our work, in this moment, is telling the full truth of the Black experience and disrupting the lies of erasure and white supremacy. When we tell the truth, stories of Black and Indigenous solidarity, Black and Latinx partnerships and Black joy making emerge. We commit ourselves to continuing the tradition of Black kin-keepers — notably Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and Cedric Robinson — because we know that we must collect and retell our own histories to counter false narratives of white-centered history which obscure Black efforts to create family, joy, and community.

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