One of the root causes of the fragmentation and disorder I see in modern life is this profound disconnection from our true self, our lineage and our relationship to the natural world. Without this foundation to stand upon, we have become vulnerable, easily manipulated and controlled.
by Larissa Skye Van Rensselaer
I remember the deep desire to scrub off my skin and no longer be myself.
I was around 5 years old and had just learned about the transatlantic slave trade. I was horrified and at a loss for how human beings could treat each other that way. I had never paid much attention to the color of people’s skin. But once I learned that people called “white” stole people called “black” from their lands, enslaved and tortured them, I could no longer see the world the same way. The difference — the “otherness” — etched itself into my consciousness. I was a little light-skinned girl growing up on Caribbean islands that played a major role in the triangular trade system. The shame of being associated with the people who committed such brutality began weaving itself into my understanding of self. I didn’t know how to face it. I wanted to shrink; to be someone else; to scrub off my skin.
A couple years later, my family and I were driving up the east coast of the United States. We arrived at a giant house in Camden, South Carolina called Mulberry. All I knew was that this property had been in our family for many generations. (That I now know is through my father’s destiny line: Chestnut to Williams to Miles.) And as we were driving through the state, we were stopping by for a short visit.
I remember walking in the door of the grand mansion and seeing a big antique book with pages and pages of names.
“Who are these people?” I asked innocently.
“The names of the slaves who worked here,” responded the woman who welcomed us in.
I was stunned. The tour continued. The chatter of the grown-ups began to drown out. My heart was racing. My mind was spinning.
And then, we arrived at the slave quarters.
I lost it. All that had been bubbling up in me, came spilling out.
“What do you mean? This home is in our family… WE owned slaves?”
I never wanted to go back there again.
The Van Rensselaer name derives from “de Rensselaer,” a farmstead near Putten in the Gelderland province of the Netherlands. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was born in 1586 to his parents Hendrick Wolfer and Maria Parfraet, on the family farmstead.
Hendrick Wolfer and his twin brother, Johan, were both captains in the Dutch revolutionary army during the Eighty Year’s War; when Holland was fighting for independence from the Spanish Crown. Hendrick was killed in battle at the Siege of Ostend in 1602, when Kiliaen was 16 years old; drastically changing the trajectory of his son’s life.
Kiliaen moved away from the rural countryside and went to live in Amsterdam. Global trade was on the rise and Amsterdam was quickly becoming the financial center of Europe. Kiliaen’s uncle took him in and trained him in the international trade market. He went on to become a successful merchant in the luxury commercial market shaped by the expanding Dutch global trade economy. In 1621, he became a founding investor/director in the Dutch West India Company (WIC). Through his connection with the WIC, he became a Patroon (quasi-feudal landholder) in the American Dutch colony of New Netherland. Around 1630, he was granted a huge swath of land on the Hudson River – in today’s Albany, NY – which became known as the patroonship Rensselaerswck. The land was “acquired” from the indigenous Mahican people through various agreements negotiated by Dutch agents. However, we know how distorted modern dialects can be, and how the Mahican people understood “ownership” was vastly different from how the Dutch understood it. While Kiliaen never set foot in New Netherland, he managed the land through agents and family relatives – his son Jeremias Van Rensselaer was the first to manage directly on the land. Rensselaerswyck remained a powerful landholding system from its founding through Dutch and English colonial rule, surviving even the American Revolution before ultimately collapsing during the Anti-Rent conflicts in the 1840s.
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer is my great (x8) grandfather.
I knew from a young age that my family was of Dutch heritage and that we had once held “wealth and power.” I do not remember how old I was when I understood the Van Rensselaer connection to the transatlantic slave trade and how we “acquired” land from the native people of the Americas. I do remember at every step of surface level discovery, the more “ick” I felt about my lineage.
I did not want to learn anymore. I did not want to be a part of it, or in any connection with them. I felt shame, guilt, disgust and embarrassment.
In modern society, we are told that the self is a solitary unit. We are fed the illusion of individuality and encouraged with the idea that we can create ourselves anew – over and over again. We are programmed away from the history we stand upon and the importance of how our history defines our concept of self and our place in the natural order of the world we live in. I never really understood or wanted to fit into the modern societal structure. Underneath the drive for conformity and finding my place to “fit in,” there has always been a streak within me that wanted to do life my own way, carve my own path. The idea that I could follow my dreams and my heart’s desires, be a little unconventional, and create a life from those unconventionalities felt attractive to me. Believing that I did not need to look into the past to understand myself, that I could “reject” the brutal and painful history of my ancestors and instead look forward and create something new, felt in alignment and frankly easier than facing it. Especially entering young adulthood, as I began opening my awareness of the natural world and really wanting to cultivate a connection with it. When I looked into my past, I felt like I had no place in that desired connection to more indigenous ways of life. How could I let myself enter those spaces when I descended from the colonizers?
The guidance was stronger than the little voice telling me I did not belong. I did take steps towards cultivating a life in closer connection to nature. Almost 9 years ago, I relocated to the jungles of Costa Rica where I could immerse myself in the elements, learn the systems of permaculture and cultivating land, and start building a life outside of the colonial system. However, this feeling of guilt, shame and judgement continued to pulse underneath the surface.
It was not until my early thirties when I was taking part in a traditional, physiologic postpartum care training – where we unpacked the history of a couple thousand years ago, where the ruptures in midwifery culture began – that I started to understand that I, too, have indigenous roots as a human being of European descent. To understand that colonization and its effects have a much larger scope than the last 500 years. To understand that every "ethnic" group on this planet has had genocide performed against them. And to understand that our way to effect actual change – have an impact towards cultivating healing and true thriving life for all – was to come together as one humanity; rather than upholding the constructs of perceived differences in relation to skin color, ethnicity, and class structures.
As the path of life unfolded, I found myself coming into contact with the Kemetic preservations and teachings of the Dogon and entered Per Ankh initiation in the M’TAM Temples of Kemetic Philosophy and Spirituality. My understanding of the concept of self has significantly expanded. We each are created from the two energy poles of our parents. The energy pole of our father, our blood line, carries the blood that will be passed on to us and all of his descendants. Our blood carries who we are and who we come from. It carries our culture, our do’s and don’ts, the vows our great ancestors made, aligning us to the role we play in the evolution of ourselves and humanity. The energy pole of our Mother, our destiny line, becomes the distributary directing the river blood of our father; the course the blood is directed on. Her line shapes our destiny in this lifetime and beyond. Kemet defines family as the foundation of every human being's survival. Our sense of self cannot be disconnected from the father who gave us our blood and the mother who birthed us into being. We stand on their shoulders; they stand on the shoulders of their parents; and the continuity of support and history ripples backwards.
I began to understand the Van Rensselaers and the Miles as the two energy poles that gave life to my father, Hendrik Barnard Van Rensselaer Jr; the man who gave me life and the blood that runs through my veins. I began to grasp the importance of family, the family structure, and our lineage inheritance. I began to understand that I AM my ancestors and it's only by reconciling with them that I can come into true alignment with myself and my spirit's purpose. As much as I might desire to distance myself for “moral and emotional” reasons, it will only continue bringing rupture and problems into my life. I cannot stand in alignment with life if I am at odds with the ones I stand upon, the ones who paved the way for me to be here today.
This was very confronting. I could no longer run away from the reality of my history. To truly learn to face, accept and integrate this history with no judgement has been a challenge. Yet, it is a challenge and a responsibility I cannot turn away from.
And so I have begun taking the steps to discover the history…to learn the names, to trace the lines; to feel the weight of what has transpired on Tah (Earth) in the past 425 years since the end of the last NTR Year; to understand more of the systems we were a part of and the roles we played throughout colonial expansion; and to begin to perceive the vastness of our complete history. The true scope of time is much greater than I can currently fathom. The last 425 years, while important, is only a fraction of our blood’s existence.
Who were we 1,000 years ago? 10,000 years ago? 30,000 years ago?
What is our purpose? Our culture? Our do’s and our don’ts?
What are the vows we made for our contribution to the fabric of humanity?
I am on this path of discovery and refinement. I cannot rush and force the revealing of the answers. I can continue to solidify my discipline and refinement of myself while I hold my inquiries.
I have had the honor of receiving Bayuali readings with Neb Naba Iritah on two occasions. Both were incredibly impactful, especially while beginning to unpack who I am. I am still learning to read between the lines and understand all that was given to me by Tah and my ancestors, through Neb Naba. It has made itself clear time and time again that being here, learning from the Dogon, is no coincidence.
We’ve just barely scratched the surface of reincarnation and all that the process of returning into life entails, so there is much that is still above my understanding. I have been given the reincarnation spirit of my youngest son and myself. My father transitioned from this lifetime almost 20 years ago, when I was 15 years old. He returned 3.5 years ago when my son was born. My grandfather transitioned 41 years ago and returned 35 years ago when I was born.
In this lifetime, I “lost” my father at a young age and never knew my grandfather — and my son never knew his — that used to bring a profound level of grief. The grief began to disperse through the years in Costa Rica, once I truly allowed myself to move through it and open my awareness to the presence of my father’s spirit — to feel his guidance and protection from the unseen. And now, with the reincarnation knowledge, comes the realization that, yes, we never “met” them but we ARE them. My grandfather lived his lifetime raising his son (my father); who then became a daughter (me/my grandfather) to my father; who then became a mother to my son (my father). We’ve been in this sequential dance for at least 4 generations. That information alone, without the full scope of the reincarnation process, brings profundity to my awareness. Again, this is not a coincidence. We are here to uncover and step into our purpose. As Neb Naba Iritah said to me, “it’s good to know the self before you really know how to address life and spirituality and existence.”
I am not here to judge, condemn, or turn away from my history. I am here to face the truth. To see and understand myself fully. To humbly bow down to the divine, to my ancestors, and learn to move forward in life in an honorable way. To reconcile what needs to be brought back into balance. And restore the connection to our vows and purpose.
One of the root causes of the fragmentation and disorder I see in modern life is this profound disconnection from our true self, our lineage and our relationship to the natural world. Through the crusades, agendas of colonization, and the systematic dismantling of culture and family over the last couple thousand years, this connection has steadily eroded away. Without this foundation to stand upon, we have become vulnerable, easily manipulated and controlled. Eventually, to the point where the colonization no longer needs to come from an external force; the fracture embedded itself within our minds and we began perpetuating it ourselves, consciously or subconsciously.
We are living amongst the disorder this degradation has led to. We are lost. We are floundering. We are self-sabotaging because we have forgotten who we are and what we came to this earth to accomplish. We live in distraction from ourselves and our purpose. We live in disconnection from the natural world, attempting to “dominate” it. Often praising that domination, when in reality, we can only live in disharmony with the earth for so long until our lives cease to exist.
In hindsight, I can see many ways this disconnection from myself manifested destructive behaviors, patterns, and choices. I used to blame the system. I used to feel disempowered by the system. But that has only kept me stuck. This is the survival loop the system depends on, keeping us in degeneration and survival mode, giving our life force energy while the power of the very thing depleting us grows.
We are existing in pivotal times. There is serious work and responsibility that needs to be taken on for us to return home to ourselves and our blood in a good, complete and honorable way.
It is easy for our little brains to judge and think that we know the reasons for why life unfolds the way it does. We cannot judge those who brought us into the world and gave us our life. We cannot judge those who came before them, and before them. That only leads to further isolation from who we are.
We are all born into inheritances larger than ourselves, and we move through life carrying both the wisdom and distortions of those inheritances. We make mistakes. We fail. We face challenge, after challenge. Every mistake, every failure and every challenge is an opportunity for growth and evolution; to bring us closer to our purpose.
We need to cultivate the courage to face life fully. We need to stop seeing ourselves as victims to, or above, the circumstances nature provides us for our own growth. We need to stop blaming external forces for our current circumstances. We each have a choice in the direction our life takes. And through every bump in the road, we have the choice to keep walking a path towards ourselves and our great ancestors; to discover who we are and why we are here and restore a cultured world for humanity to thrive in.
For the first time in my life, I am learning to release decades – maybe lifetimes – of shame and judgement.
This is my journey. A journey towards reconciliation and reconnection, towards understanding what it means to have Van Rensselaer blood flowing through me, towards standing consciously and in alignment with the responsibility of my lineage. It is much larger than me and my current perceptions. While there are aspects of the sequentiality of my life I can trace, I am also aware that there are many more forces at play that I am not yet privy to. And the only way to uncover the truth I am seeking, is to continue walking the path, step-by-step with humility and Suru.
