A Conduit for Change
The Combahee River Collective Statement from 1977 stated that “major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives.”
Al Badiyah a collective of Storytellers, Designers, Writers, and Artists uniting their skills for collective liberation. It offers a platform at the intersection of design, activism, and media.
“Al Badiyah is a collective that celebrates heritage through spatial intervention with a bias towards collective liberation.”
Freire wrote, in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors” (Freire, 1970).
Beginnings
The desert and its inhabitants have long been antagonized. Terms like “deserted” and “desertification” support Haynes’ rightful assertion that “Desert is not an innocent term” (Haynes, 2013). Historically, across several languages, “desert” is associated with abandonment, scarcity, and death (Alsane, 2019). The colonial perspective views the desert as terra nullius or tabula rasa—an inherently violent framing.
Al Badiyah, one of many Arabic words for “desert,” stems from the verb bad’a—“to begin.” It can also mean “wilderness” or “jungle.” The word contains multitudes. Al-Bedu (often misnamed “Bedouins”) are the People of Al Badiyah—those from the Land: “our beginnings.” This single word can spark conversations on re-indigenizing lands across biomes, from “jungles” to “deserts.