Golden Names for an African People
by Nia Damali

Robbing peoples and countries of their rightful names was one of the cruel games that colonizers played on colonized people. Names are like magic markers in the long streams of racial memory, for racial memories are the rivers leading to the sea where the memory is stored. To rob people of their name is to set in motion a psychic disturbance that can, in turn, create a permanent crisis of identity.