PODCASTS: Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor
Readings from the essays on life and linage by white women
A Writers Radio special six part series
A Writers Radio special six part series
Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor
Essays on Life and Lineage
by White Women
by White Women
Introduction
S101, April 19 to May 2, 2021
Length: 23'
Length: 23'
Lisa Iversen with host Ingrid Rose
Length: 23 mins
Using the lens of inherited trauma and family history, Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor offers a hopeful, humanizing path for dismantling whiteness.
For over two decades, family constellations facilitator and therapist Lisa Iversen has been working with groups, including descendants of ancestors who have perpetrated harm or been victimized in circumstances of injustice. In this collection of essays, she brings together twelve white women who explore the role of whiteness in collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war. Through genealogical research, family documents, and deep reflection, these writers from the US, Canada, and the UK disentangle themes of innocence, grief, race, privilege, and belonging in their families and ancestries.
Each essayist shares moving stories and anecdotes from their life, adding historical and cultural context to current conversations about white women's role in creating and sustaining whiteness.
Length: 23 mins
Using the lens of inherited trauma and family history, Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor offers a hopeful, humanizing path for dismantling whiteness.
For over two decades, family constellations facilitator and therapist Lisa Iversen has been working with groups, including descendants of ancestors who have perpetrated harm or been victimized in circumstances of injustice. In this collection of essays, she brings together twelve white women who explore the role of whiteness in collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war. Through genealogical research, family documents, and deep reflection, these writers from the US, Canada, and the UK disentangle themes of innocence, grief, race, privilege, and belonging in their families and ancestries.
Each essayist shares moving stories and anecdotes from their life, adding historical and cultural context to current conversations about white women's role in creating and sustaining whiteness.
Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor
Essays on Life and Lineage
by White Women
by White Women
Roots Borders and Belonging
S102, May 17 to May 30, 2021
Length: 26'
Length: 26'
Karin Konstantynowicz:
Roots Borders and Belonging
June Blue Spruce:
Warning: Whiteness May Be Hazardous to Your Health
Host, Carole Harmon, Music and audio production, Gary Sill
Karin Konstantynowicz and her family emigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe following World War 2. Their roots are in contested territory which has changed its name, and its overlords many times. Starting with the idea of an "invasive species", Karin muses on the nature of identity and belonging and the experiences she and her family had as new immigrants to the Canadian prairies. Karin is a teacher, crisis counsellor, broadcaster and writer who lives in Vancouver, Canada.
June Blue Spruce comes from a long line of doctors in the USA. In her essay June probes the racist roots of the AMA and prevalent racism within the medical system in America. She delves into her own conflicted history as an activist, and a gay woman working within this system. June is a reformer, health worker, and writer who lives in Seattle, USA.
Roots Borders and Belonging
June Blue Spruce:
Warning: Whiteness May Be Hazardous to Your Health
Host, Carole Harmon, Music and audio production, Gary Sill
Karin Konstantynowicz and her family emigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe following World War 2. Their roots are in contested territory which has changed its name, and its overlords many times. Starting with the idea of an "invasive species", Karin muses on the nature of identity and belonging and the experiences she and her family had as new immigrants to the Canadian prairies. Karin is a teacher, crisis counsellor, broadcaster and writer who lives in Vancouver, Canada.
June Blue Spruce comes from a long line of doctors in the USA. In her essay June probes the racist roots of the AMA and prevalent racism within the medical system in America. She delves into her own conflicted history as an activist, and a gay woman working within this system. June is a reformer, health worker, and writer who lives in Seattle, USA.
Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor
Words Can Kill
S103, June 14 to June 27, 2021
Length: 24'
Length: 24'
Sonya Lea:
Bloodlines
A Legal Lynching and a Family's Reckoning
Sabine Olsen:
It Cannot Be Condoned
Whiteness and the Legacy of War
Host, Ingrid Rose, Music and audio production, Gary Sill
The hanging in 1936 of Rainey Bethea, a young black man, for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman was the last public execution in America. Sonya Lea’s family participated in this event in various ways. In her essay, Bloodlines: A Legal Lynching and a Family's Reckoning, Sonya brings this event to light through her struggle, first to know, then to understand. Sonya is a writer of memoir and fiction who has lived in both the USA and Canada. She presently lives in Banff, in the Canadian Rockies.
Sabine's essay was developed from an interview with Lisa Iversen. Sabine is a Reiki master who emigrated to Canada from Munich, a birthplace she shares with Adolf Hitler. Reflecting on the speeches and rallies which swept Hitler to power in 1930's Germany, Sabine decries the increasing use of hate speech today. She writes: ...that's how it starts, a little bit, a little bit more, it gets bolder and bolder and before you know it there's a monster you can't control. Sabine lives near Abbotsford, west of Vancouver, Canada.
Bloodlines
A Legal Lynching and a Family's Reckoning
Sabine Olsen:
It Cannot Be Condoned
Whiteness and the Legacy of War
Host, Ingrid Rose, Music and audio production, Gary Sill
The hanging in 1936 of Rainey Bethea, a young black man, for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman was the last public execution in America. Sonya Lea’s family participated in this event in various ways. In her essay, Bloodlines: A Legal Lynching and a Family's Reckoning, Sonya brings this event to light through her struggle, first to know, then to understand. Sonya is a writer of memoir and fiction who has lived in both the USA and Canada. She presently lives in Banff, in the Canadian Rockies.
Sabine's essay was developed from an interview with Lisa Iversen. Sabine is a Reiki master who emigrated to Canada from Munich, a birthplace she shares with Adolf Hitler. Reflecting on the speeches and rallies which swept Hitler to power in 1930's Germany, Sabine decries the increasing use of hate speech today. She writes: ...that's how it starts, a little bit, a little bit more, it gets bolder and bolder and before you know it there's a monster you can't control. Sabine lives near Abbotsford, west of Vancouver, Canada.
Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor
Honouring The Past
S104, July 12 to July 25, 2021
Length: 23'
Length: 23'
"Honouring The Past"
program 4 of 6
Summer Starr & Sharon Halfnight
In her introduction to the anthology Lisa Iversen writes:
In the collective field of the soul, everyone and everything belongs. This knowingness provides a necessary resource when there are experiences of injustice....Bringing visibility to both perpetrators and victims of injustice, whether past or present, is necessary to heal inheritances of collective trauma.
In this episode one writer explores her ancestral history while another looks at today's challenges and imagines the future.
Summer Starr
Whiteness in Colonial America: My Family's Legacy
Summer writes:
...for most of my life, as far as I knew, we were just Californians. This lack of history put the focus on the now, on the immediate, and the past held very little interest for me...My concept of family history was only a couple of generations back. That all changed in the summer of 2019.
Sharon Halfnight
White Walking
Sharon begins her essay:
I welcomed the invitation to contribute an essay to this book on whiteness before I had any idea about what it might require of me. It's been a tussle, a full body-mind-soul wrestling with what whiteness means in this context and what it means to me. There has been no comfort in this inquiry.
Host, Carole Harmon, Music and Audio Production, Gary Sill
If you are new to this series, listen to our podcast of the introduction to the series: Lisa Iversen, the editor, in conversation with Ingrid Rose.
Read more about the book: reviews, links to past online events on CAB Publishing website.
program 4 of 6
Summer Starr & Sharon Halfnight
In her introduction to the anthology Lisa Iversen writes:
In the collective field of the soul, everyone and everything belongs. This knowingness provides a necessary resource when there are experiences of injustice....Bringing visibility to both perpetrators and victims of injustice, whether past or present, is necessary to heal inheritances of collective trauma.
In this episode one writer explores her ancestral history while another looks at today's challenges and imagines the future.
Summer Starr
Whiteness in Colonial America: My Family's Legacy
Summer writes:
...for most of my life, as far as I knew, we were just Californians. This lack of history put the focus on the now, on the immediate, and the past held very little interest for me...My concept of family history was only a couple of generations back. That all changed in the summer of 2019.
Sharon Halfnight
White Walking
Sharon begins her essay:
I welcomed the invitation to contribute an essay to this book on whiteness before I had any idea about what it might require of me. It's been a tussle, a full body-mind-soul wrestling with what whiteness means in this context and what it means to me. There has been no comfort in this inquiry.
Host, Carole Harmon, Music and Audio Production, Gary Sill
If you are new to this series, listen to our podcast of the introduction to the series: Lisa Iversen, the editor, in conversation with Ingrid Rose.
Read more about the book: reviews, links to past online events on CAB Publishing website.
Legacy
A Fine Balance
S105, August 09 to August 22, 2021
Length: 26'
Length: 26'
Host, Ingrid Rose, Music and audio production, Gary Sill
CAROLE HARMON:
In Mountain Light — Walking With My Grandfather
In this essay Carole explores her family's role in the colonial history of the Canadian Rockies where she was raised in a family of landscape photographers and worked as a photographer and publisher for many years.
I didn't intend to write about the plight of aboriginal people in Canada, Carole says. I began to think about boundaries. The National Parks were supposedly created for ALL Canadians but the National Parks Act excluded aboriginal people from these, their ancestral lands. Aboriginal people in Canada, after so many horrific injustices, even now being revealed, are still seen and treated as 'other' by mainstream Canadian society.
In her essay Carole explores her own photography as an example of transgressing boundaries.
UNA SUSELI O'CONNELL
The Cuckoo That Laid the Golden Egg—The Legacy of Nazi Gold in Switzerland
Una writes extensively about family history based on letters and diaries left by both sides of her family. Whereas Carole Harmon's family legacy is photographs, Una's is words.
Una's Swiss mother taught her, 'gold is good, gold will save your life'. Coming from a poor family in then impoverished Switzerland this belief of Una's mother is understandable. Instead the paralyzing spectre of want led to fear and imprudence.
This is an essay which explores how a country ignored its cultural heritage and values in order to secure prosperity and security, It reveals how thin and mutable the boundaries between victim and perpetrator actually are.
Una's family memoir, The Absent Prince explores the effect of war and other cultural values which shatter families by isolating and removing the men from family life. It can be ordered internationally through Amazon and more widely in the UK.
If you are new to this series, listen to our PODCAST of the Introduction to the series: Lisa Iversen, the editor, in conversation with Ingrid Rose.
Read more about the book: reviews, links to past online events on CAB Publishing website.
CAROLE HARMON:
In Mountain Light — Walking With My Grandfather
In this essay Carole explores her family's role in the colonial history of the Canadian Rockies where she was raised in a family of landscape photographers and worked as a photographer and publisher for many years.
I didn't intend to write about the plight of aboriginal people in Canada, Carole says. I began to think about boundaries. The National Parks were supposedly created for ALL Canadians but the National Parks Act excluded aboriginal people from these, their ancestral lands. Aboriginal people in Canada, after so many horrific injustices, even now being revealed, are still seen and treated as 'other' by mainstream Canadian society.
In her essay Carole explores her own photography as an example of transgressing boundaries.
UNA SUSELI O'CONNELL
The Cuckoo That Laid the Golden Egg—The Legacy of Nazi Gold in Switzerland
Una writes extensively about family history based on letters and diaries left by both sides of her family. Whereas Carole Harmon's family legacy is photographs, Una's is words.
Una's Swiss mother taught her, 'gold is good, gold will save your life'. Coming from a poor family in then impoverished Switzerland this belief of Una's mother is understandable. Instead the paralyzing spectre of want led to fear and imprudence.
This is an essay which explores how a country ignored its cultural heritage and values in order to secure prosperity and security, It reveals how thin and mutable the boundaries between victim and perpetrator actually are.
Una's family memoir, The Absent Prince explores the effect of war and other cultural values which shatter families by isolating and removing the men from family life. It can be ordered internationally through Amazon and more widely in the UK.
If you are new to this series, listen to our PODCAST of the Introduction to the series: Lisa Iversen, the editor, in conversation with Ingrid Rose.
Read more about the book: reviews, links to past online events on CAB Publishing website.
Whiteness Is Not An Ancestor
The Way Forward
Kate Regan phd, Christina Greené
S106, September 06 to September 19, 2021
Length: 27'
Length: 27'
Host, Carole Harmon
Music and audio production
Gary Sill
Not So Nice: Confessions of an "Innocent" White Woman
Alaska born and raised Kate Regan begins her essay with a question:
What is the myth of whiteness that those of us born with white skin must journey through and learn from?
Sharing with the listener from personal soul work and experiences from her professional career working with companies and organizations as diverse as Lucas Films, UN leadership development program, American Express and JFK University, Kate explores the meaning of conscience in it's original Greek and Latin meaning of knowledge within oneself.
Weltschmerz
German born, and an immigrant to the USA, Christina Greené comes from a family which has suffered unspeakable persecution and hardship. The title of her essay means world pain, the weight of the world in one's heart. Christina was guided in a loving way by her maternal grandmother, Hulda, to understand the tragedies of the past. Hulda's family were Kulags, peasant farmers in the Volhynia region of Ukraine, who suffered from Stalin's inhumane and murderous program of land annexation in the 1930's.
Who alive today does not feel Weltschmerz? And yet, despite the tragedies of the past, Christina’s essay focuses on healing.
Listen at the top of each hour:
August 25 - Sept. 5
Music and audio production
Gary Sill
Not So Nice: Confessions of an "Innocent" White Woman
Alaska born and raised Kate Regan begins her essay with a question:
What is the myth of whiteness that those of us born with white skin must journey through and learn from?
Sharing with the listener from personal soul work and experiences from her professional career working with companies and organizations as diverse as Lucas Films, UN leadership development program, American Express and JFK University, Kate explores the meaning of conscience in it's original Greek and Latin meaning of knowledge within oneself.
Weltschmerz
German born, and an immigrant to the USA, Christina Greené comes from a family which has suffered unspeakable persecution and hardship. The title of her essay means world pain, the weight of the world in one's heart. Christina was guided in a loving way by her maternal grandmother, Hulda, to understand the tragedies of the past. Hulda's family were Kulags, peasant farmers in the Volhynia region of Ukraine, who suffered from Stalin's inhumane and murderous program of land annexation in the 1930's.
Who alive today does not feel Weltschmerz? And yet, despite the tragedies of the past, Christina’s essay focuses on healing.
Listen at the top of each hour:
August 25 - Sept. 5
"A timely and thoughtful discussion about the intersection of gender and White privilege." -Kirkus Reviews
Using the lens of inherited trauma and family history, Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor offers a hopeful, humanizing path for dismantling whiteness.
These podcasts present readings from the essayists. Collectively, they share moving stories and anecdotes from their lives, adding historical and cultural context to current conversations about white women's role in creating and sustaining whiteness.
For over two decades, family constellations facilitator and therapist Lisa Iversen has been working with groups, including descendants of ancestors who have perpetrated harm or been victimized in circumstances of injustice. In this collection of essays, she brings together twelve white women who explore the role of whiteness in collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war.
Using the lens of inherited trauma and family history, Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor offers a hopeful, humanizing path for dismantling whiteness.
These podcasts present readings from the essayists. Collectively, they share moving stories and anecdotes from their lives, adding historical and cultural context to current conversations about white women's role in creating and sustaining whiteness.
For over two decades, family constellations facilitator and therapist Lisa Iversen has been working with groups, including descendants of ancestors who have perpetrated harm or been victimized in circumstances of injustice. In this collection of essays, she brings together twelve white women who explore the role of whiteness in collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war.
Through genealogical research, family documents, and deep reflection, these writers from the US, Canada, and the UK disentangle themes of innocence, grief, race, privilege, and belonging in their families and ancestries.
Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor will appeal to those ready to engage with the difficult truths of history, those interested in healing collective historic trauma and dismantling racism, therapists and family counsellors, and all concerned about the fate of democratic nations sourced in whiteness.
Readings are by Lisa Iversen, Sonya Lea, Karin Konstantynowicz, Summer Starr, June BlueSpruce, Sabine Olsen, Carole Harmon, Christina Green , Sharon Halfnight, Una Suseli O'Connell.
Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor will appeal to those ready to engage with the difficult truths of history, those interested in healing collective historic trauma and dismantling racism, therapists and family counsellors, and all concerned about the fate of democratic nations sourced in whiteness.
Readings are by Lisa Iversen, Sonya Lea, Karin Konstantynowicz, Summer Starr, June BlueSpruce, Sabine Olsen, Carole Harmon, Christina Green , Sharon Halfnight, Una Suseli O'Connell.