We hope you enjoy this article from diversity training course participant, Rebecca Cross Farallon, on her reflections of Yapukuspa (the Quechua word for digging) the first session of Reimagining the Future of Waldorf Education with Roman Vizcarra.
Reimagining the Future of Waldorf Education Diversity Training with Roman Vizcarra
Reflections from Rebecca Cross Farallon – participant in the training.
Yapukuspa
To build a curriculum of diversity and inclusion, we must first understand the truth of our history. Otherwise “we are like a wound that has not been cleaned but the skin has healed and inside a poison advances,” says Roman Vizcarra, instructor and founder of Kusi Kawsay Andean School in Peru. In the first course of Diversity Training: Yapukuspa, Quechua for digging, Vizcarra speaks to the historic atrocities, genocide and continued oppression of Indigenous cultures.
It is not only to become aware of the painful truth of our history, but also “one must attempt to reach the other. To really understand, one must go empty… How is another and their reality of life?” Roman Vizcarra calls us to go beyond empathy and references “mitfülen,” German for “to feel with.” We must “face the discomfort without a defensive mind or trying to frame something so it’s easy to digest.”
To take heed of Vizcarra’s words and the impact of this course, we turn towards the severity of our past to see it clearly and grieve the tragedies taken place.
We may not plant before we dig and there are many stones in this soil, but we talk about Yapukuspa with the purpose of preparing the land. “You dig not because you are looking for a treasure, you dig to break the hard parts.“
How and when to reveal these painful truths to our children was a topic of discussion and much reflection that will continue to unfold throughout the course.
Artwork by Rebecca Cross Farallon inspired by the challenges of Yapukuspa.
Roman Vizcarra has worked to preserve and share his native Andean culture for most of his life. As a UNESCO-sponsored artist, he traveled throughout Europe, exposing audiences to Andean art forms. Together with his wife, Fielding Wood Vizcarra, they co-own and manage an inn, a restaurant, and a spa that showcase Indigenous culture and Kawsaypaq, a tour operation offering immersive cultural experiences of Peru’s Sacred Valley. He is a mentor for a youth-led organic farm and a founding parent of Kusi Kawsay Andean School in Peru, which strives to develop respect of cultural and ecological diversity, and to honor the wisdom and dignity of Indigenous traditions, reciprocity, respect, and social justice.
