Language is not neutral. Stories, histories are essential for constructing identities and shaping world views. Coloniality has permeated the creation of words, use of language and actions driven by language.
HOMEF’s Wisdom Gatherings aim to decolonize language and concepts in ways that will help achieve socioecological transformation. This space seeks scaffolds that enable the JUMP needed for radical transformation. To be clear, JUMP is the acronym for justice, movement and power. It requires an intelligible language and supportive knowledge.
Primarily environmentalism is largely pursued within concepts that retain the very structures that created and sustains the polycrisis confronting the world today.
We cannot effectively reclaim environmentalism that respects our culture, world views and identity without decolonizing the language and structures of knowledge that incubates, births and sustains the crises. It is an indisputable fact that colonialism plundered land, labour and at the same time colonised minds, making progress seem impossible without the reckless exploitation and transformation of nature.
Our engagement promotes the rejection of terms and concepts that lock in subjugation and destruction and promotes the pathways for environmental repairs, recovery, restoration and reparation. We must reject environmentalism that ignores cultural identities and permits the creation of sacrifice zones. Wisdom Gatherings aim to promote and implant emancipatory, justice-centred and pluriversal vision of ecological action. They anchor in memory to build the future.
We refuse to ignore the epistemic violence that locks in structural violence and sustains both socioeconomic dispossession and ecological degradation. In our analyses we must see to the integration of political economy and cultural critique.
Indigenous wisdom and knowledge are fundamentally essential for the decolonization of environmentalism. These must never be artificial embellishments. In fact we must closely track the genealogies of ideas that may have become mainstream. We need to critique phrases like global warming, corporate social responsibility (CSR), net-zero, etc.
Reclaiming concepts and language
In Ibibio language, Eti Uwem means good life or good living. It holds the core idea of living in harmony with nature, all beings and all peoples. It incorporates dignity, respect, fairness, rectitude, integrity, solidarity and contentment. Eti Uwem includes the key principles of social justice, power relations and citizens’ and communal ownership and control of local resources as opposed to speculation, exploitation, expropriation and destructive activities. It rejects the commodification of nature, sometimes termed green economy, and rather elevates green democracy. Close concepts are sumak Kawsay of the Kichwa people of Latin America, or buen vivir.
Key African concepts that provide us with tools for birthing SeT include Sankofa, an imagery rooted in the culture of the Akan people of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Sankofa is an Adinkra symbol of a bird whose feet face forward but the head is arched back to pick an egg. It is understood to mean that we must reflect upon our history in order to build our future. It also has roots in a Twi proverb which says that “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten”. It is almost an order: go back and get it!
In sum, the critical need is to return to nature and take our place among relatives, understanding that every being has a right to be free from pollution, exploitation and destruction. To pave the needed pathway we have to harvest our social, economic, political, and ethical concepts for building sustain-able solutions regarding the use of natural re-sources, including consumption patterns and vigorously challenge an economic model that seeks profit and sacrifices nature. Concepts such as Eti Uwem demand social inclusion, cultural diversity, knowledge and environmental justice.
We cannot effectively address the polycrisis without radical political, economic, social, cultural, and structural shifts in societal relationships with nature. This requires holistic approaches that integrate social, political, cultural and historical wisdom. We must go back to get on the right path to be able to repair the widening fractures entrenched by extractivism and related biodiversity and livelihood losses and erosion of dignity.
We may not do everything at once, but we can certainly do one thing at any one time. We will do something today. We will take a step on the ladder to our preferred future. That is why we have an astute professor with us today to help us understand the Ibibio concept of Abasi Isong as a scaffold for effecting the much needed socioecological transformation.
Nnimmo Bassey, at HOMEF’s Wisdom Gathering at EtiUwem Ecological Centre, Ikot Nseyen on 10 September 2026.
