Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Author:Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2020-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

Amazon river dolphins have not done well in captivity. Less than 20 percent have been able to survive in aquariums worldwide. The record in the United States is even worse. According to the Audubon Society, out of seventy Amazon river, aka boto dolphins captured and housed in US aquariums between 1956 and 1966, only one survived into the mid-1980s.

What’s the problem? First of all, freedom is a basic need and a divine imperative. As former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith said on her daily poetry podcast The Slowdown, “All animals allowed to live free and wild protect something holy in the world.”31 I agree. All animals. Including us.

And so what can those of us navigating layers of captivity, forced migration, and systemic involuntary adaptation learn from the specific experiences of the captive boto in the second half of the twentieth century?

Some zoo and conservation theorists say that the boto dolphins died of massive sleep deprivation. Dolphins generally “sleep with one eye open,” as the saying goes, alternating halves of their brain to rest without drowning. Maybe you can relate?

And although scientists have not extensively observed or studied the sleep of Amazon river dolphins, some believe that the slope in the river bank is a resting place that supportively holds Amazon river dolphins while they are sleeping, unlike ocean dolphins who sleep in the middle of the water, without the support of the edges of land. Another way to say it is that the sleep deprivation that boto dolphins suffer in captivity is a result of a lack of the boundaries that helped them rest well at home. Is a lack of supportive boundaries impacting your sleep?

As a daughter of immigrant insomniacs who sleeps with one ear open, I think this question of sleep is crucial. As Black women artists, from Almah LaVon Rice-Faina to Shelly Davis Roberts to Patrisse Khan-Cullors to The Nap Ministry, are making abundantly clear, rest is resistance and sleep is political. Systemic nightmares threaten our sleep.

And the systems of harm that deprive us of restful boundaries are the exact same systems that enforce punitive borders where countless families are separated right now, caged, stressed and sleepless. The CIA has openly used sleep deprivation as an “interrogation practice” since 9/11. I agree with the psychologists and human rights activists who insist that sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

So, for decades, Amazon river dolphins have been subjected to captivity and torture. Mostly, they have not survived. What are the conditions of your sleep deprivation? What are the contours of your captivity? Does it offer something to your own torment to know you are not alone in your tiredness?

Could we, the restless, the overworked, the underslept, the one-eye-open wary sleepers, activate kinship through the dolphin adaptations we have already learned in order not to drown here? Could we imagine a world where we are all safe enough to sleep held in the arms of the river, in her mothering flow, supported by the boundaries we need to fully rest?

I want that for you.

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