Amoja Three Rivers and Her Legacy

Amoja Three Rivers and Cultural Etiquette, 27 pages of guidance

I’ve been writing lately about teachers of all sorts. Here is one of my favorites. Amoja Three Rivers is one of those wise women I met briefly and who continues to inspire me and others.  She explained her chosen name: Amoja means dissent traced through the blood of the mother. She described herself as an american-born African, Choctaw, Tsalagi, Ojibway Jew. She was an activist, theorist, and writer. She founded or co-founded with Blanche Jackson Market Wimmin, a cultural crafts and merchandising business, and the Accessible African Herstory Project. In her later years, Amoja Three Rivers identified herself as Kohenet Hebrew Priestess. 

Amoja was gentle and compassionate in her teaching and writing. Her voice was gentle, her intention steely and steadfast, her intellect sharp, and her activism no-nonsense. She died too young.

Amoja is no longer with us, but her legacy is rich and one expression of that legacy is her book Cultural Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-intentioned is available from Google Books https://books.google.com/books/about/Cultural_Etiquette.html?id=MWJzGQAACAAJ  It is valuable now as we navigate the layers of our cultural racism and work to heal this country.

In 27 pages, Amoja has packed her compassionate and clear-headed advice to help us navigate unlearning racism, recognize the power of our words, and put anti-racism into practice. While some of us might find the information and advice “too basic”, I find it helpful to return to the book at least yearly for reminders and information I may not have retained.

Here is one paragraph:

“Does reading this guide make you uncomfortable? Angry? Confused? Are you taking it personally? Well, not to fret. Racism has created a big horrible mess, and racial healing can sometimes be painful. Just remember that Jews and people of color do not want or need anybody’s guilt. We just want people to accept responsibility when it is appropriate, and actively work for change.”

I find this paragraph both reassuring (“not to fret. Racism has created a big horrible mess…”) and a call to action at the same time.

Amoja posted an article by the same title as her book on the website for the Foundation of Intentional Community in March, 1996 and much of the content of that article comes from the book.  Here are a few gems:

In the section titled “Just Don’t Do This, Okay?” she writes

"It is not a compliment to tell someone:

“I don’t think of you as Jewish.”

” … Black.”

” … Asian.”

” … Latina.”

” … Middle Eastern”

” … Native American.”

Or, “I think of you as white.”

She points out that the word “denigrate” means to demean by darkening and suggests we find alternate ways of saying “black hearted” or “black mood”.  

At the time she wrote this article, 4/5 of the world’s population consisted of people of color and she says,  “Therefore it is statistically incorrect as well as ethnocentrist to refuse to us as minorities. The term “minority” is used to reinforce the idea of people of color as “other”.

And here is another point:

Sometimes white people who are drawn to other people’s cultures are hungry for a way of life with more depth and meaning than what we find in 20th-century Western society. Don’t forget that every white person alive today is also descended from tribal peoples. If you are white, don’t neglect your own ancient traditions. They are as valid as anybody else’s, and the ways of your own ancestors need to be honored, remembered, and carried on into the future.

This book, just one part of Amoja Three Rivers’ legacy, came out of her experiences at the Michigan Wimmin’s Music Festival and other gatherings of women in the late 1970’s and the 1980’s. She was instrumental in empowering and bringing women of color to greater visibility in many ways to the Michigan Wimmin’s Music Festival and to women’s festival culture in general.

During the flourishing of the second wave of the feminist movement, several festivals blossomed across the U.S. (Though to say they “blossomed” leaves out the hard labor and pain of birthing them.) These were feminist focused and mostly lesbian gatherings that celebrated performing artists, primarily musicians, and much more. There were two major festivals and they both happened in the Midwest. The National Women’s Music Festival has survived and will celebrate 45 years in 2021 (a delay due to the Covid pandemic). More stories about the teachers I met there will appear in later blogs. For today, Let’s celebrate Amoja Three Rivers.

The Michigan festival, often called “Michfest” has been described in a Bonnie Morris’ book, Eden Built by Eves.  It was created in physical form every summer on 300 acres of forested land in central Michigan. During the rest of the year, the land was given time to rest; there were no permanent structures. Over the summer months, huge circus tents went up, three stages were built, towers went up to support lighting and sound equipment, kitchens were built, spaces were set aside for a huge outdoor marketplace and for community gatherings, 12-step meetings, etc.  Around the time of the full moon each August, there were as many as 10,000 women from all over the world on the land for concerts, workshops, classes, and conversations.

There are many wonder-full stories that came from the Michigan Wimmin’s Music Festival and how it empowered women in myriad ways. It certainly changed my life. The demise of the festival is a sad story for another time. For now, l need to focus on what Amoja accomplished there and the book she produced as a result. I rely on my memory here and apologize for any inaccuracies.

It became clear to many of us that women of color were not represented in appropriate numbers on the performance stages of women’s festivals. The subtle and not-so-subtle separations  between white and Black women had unfortunately survived from the first wave of the feminist movement. (For more about this history/herstory, the PBS program American Experience: The Vote is a good introduction. You can watch it at https://www.pbs.org/video/the-vote-part-1-3kph5d/ and purchase the DVD here https://shop.pbs.org/american-experience-the-vote-dvd/product/AE61906

Amoja educated the festival owners/organizers at Michigan, negotiated with them, and was one of many who demanded not only more women of color on the stages, but space set aside for women of color to meet in safety and unity. You can find more of the story on Carolyn Gage’s blog here: https://carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/cultural-etiquette-a-guide-for-the-well-intentioned-by-amoja-three-rivers  Carolyn Gage is a noted lesbian playwright and she tells the story well, so I won’t attempt to duplicate her work.

For her perspective on the Kohenet, please see Witnessing Spirit: Amoja Three Rivers on You Tube, from September 28, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7N9xybVqG0

The point of my remembering and honoring Amoja now is that her work still matters, her voice matters still. The number of women she taught is beyond our counting or knowing. But one thing is sure, she made a difference and her legacy sustains us now.  Blessed Be her memory. May we remember and carry on the work for justice.