Results for sankofa

The Akan did not believe that moving forward meant leaving the past behind. Sankofa — the bird that flies forward while looking back — says you can still go back for what you set down too soon. A language. A practice. A part of yourself. It is not wrong to fetch it.

There is a word in Twi that names something most languages leave unnamed: the particular wisdom of going back for what you left behind. Sankofa — return and get it. The Akan people of Ghana built it into a symbol of a bird that flies forward while looking back, holding the future in its beak. It is not a symbol of regret. It is a symbol of wisdom precise enough to know that the past is a resource, not a weight.