We uphold harmful systems. Dismantling them requires unravelling ourselves. As we heal, they heal.

Dismantling The Master’s Tools is a toolkit that guides users through a brave and compassionate exploration of their identities, narratives, and practices as people living and working within systems steeped in white supremacy.

What started off as a resource for researchers working within the social sector, quickly became a toolkit that's relevant for most of us. Most of us are researchers and knowledge-gatherers - we ask questions and seek answers to better understand the things, people, and relationships that we care about, so that we can better show up for them. Social R&D, then, became a case study for a much broader unravelling that includes everyone who opts in on this journey - will you?

Let’s get started shall we?

  • Read It

    An easy-to-read downloadable PDF of the toolkit, including templates for all of the activities.

    Download PDF

  • Listen to it.

    A module-by-module Spotify playlist where author Mathura β€œTemwa” Mahendren narrates the toolkit. Also available on Apple Podcasts.

    Listen in Spotify

  • Print It

    A printable version of the toolkit, coming soon!

    Coming Soon

If you benefit from this toolkit and/or share it with others, please make sure to credit and amplify the lineage of this work and,
where the resources are available to you, support our work financially.

Support the Work

Advance Praise for Dismantling the Master’s Tools (DTMT)

 
 

β€œLovingly tearing apart and mending souls using Temwa’s soothing voice”

β€” DTMT Listener

β€œThe work situates itself so effectively in the conversation. It is an educator’s dream. *Italian chef’s kiss*”

β€” DTMT Reader

β€œYour thoughtfulness around consent and compassion for the readers, thinking through different journeys of where they might be at, while also not shying away from naming things [as they are]”

β€” DTMT Reader

About the Author

 
 

Mathura "Temwa" Mahendren (she/her) is a storyteller by nature, and a design researcher by nurture.

As the daughter of asylum-seeking refugees fleeing state-sanctioned genocide in Sri Lanka, now residing on stolen land on Turtle Island, the desire to reconcile the dissonances within her lineage often manifests in her work. Her practice is rooted in a commitment to designing and sharing tools, frameworks, and brave spaces that can hold individuals, groups, and relationships through difference, discomfort, grief, change, and ultimately, growth.

As the daughter of two humans whose love survived oceans of distance across indefinite periods of time, the poverty of starting anew in a foreign land, and the sudden and premature loss of their firstborn, Mathura is intimately aware of the ways in which our ability to move through difference, discomfort, grief, change, and growth is deeply intertwined with how and how deeply we were taught to love.

To that end, love is both the method and the madness that underpins all of her bodies of work.

In her β€œspare” time, Mathura is an aspiring meme - has anything else ever made you feel as seen, laugh as hard, and/or rendered you as speechless as the perfect meme?

p.s. Mathura has a Bachelor of Health Sciences from McMaster University, and a Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University -- in case that’s the kind of bio you were looking for.

 

For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.

Audre Lorde

Support the Work

 

Truth 01

This toolkit is being made openly available because we can no longer afford for this work to be financially inaccessible.

Truth 02

 85% of this toolkit was self-funded (read: unpaid labor) by author Mathura Mahendren.

In making a contribution, regardless of its size, you will be funding:

  • Time to rest, recover, and heal from this labour & delivery.

  • Time to engage meaningfully with the critical feedback that is shared in response to the toolkit; time to continue learning and being accountable to the impact of this work.

  • Time to document and share back learnings and reflections from "the fourth trimester" - the things that only make sense / clarify in retrospect.

  • Time to imagine and envision how this work can reach more people (e.g. publishing a book, building out a platform, hosting workshops, etc.).

  • Resources to elicit the expertise of and fairly compensate other BIPOC professionals (e.g. strategists, marketers, fundraisers, community organizers, audio/video editors, web/graphic/experience designers, etc.) to support and amplify this work.

  • Time to engage in conversations and deep work with current and future collaborators about how we EMBODY and LIVE OUT the alternative, life-affirming ways of working mentioned in this toolkit, in practice, every day, in a world that vehemently resists it.

  • Time to deepen the thinking in this toolkit and build out complementary resources that address gaps, integrate emerging knowledge, and account for a changing context.

Financial accessibility exists on a spectrum.

If you are on the more privileged side of that spectrum, this is an opportunity to practice equity & reciprocity.

Contribute here with PayPal. Prefer to contribute funds via a different platform? Get in touch at hello@dismantlingthemasterstools.com

Support the Work

Follow our journey.

 
Why do we resist acknowledging lineage? For more on Lineage, check out the section titled "𝘈𝘀𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦π˜₯𝘨π˜ͺ𝘯𝘨 π˜“π˜ͺ𝘯𝘦𝘒𝘨𝘦" in Chapter 4 of the toolkit, or CH4 Ep9 of the Spotify playlist!
"I quote people a lot and I do it intentionally. For me it’s a political practice to keep other people’s names in my mouth because white supremacy tells me that all my ideas are genius and they’re only my own. And mostly they&r
What does it mean to honour lineage? For more on Lineage, check out the section titled "𝘈𝘀𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦π˜₯𝘨π˜ͺ𝘯𝘨 π˜“π˜ͺ𝘯𝘦𝘒𝘨𝘦" in Chapter 4 of the toolkit, or CH4 Ep9 of the Spotify playlist!
“Before I use work by writers, scholars, and artists outside of the Nishnaabeg nation in my own writing and thinking, I ask myself the same series of questions. Where does this theory come from? What is the context? How was it generated? Who ge
What is your relationship to the "community ambassador" model within your own practice? For more on Extraction, check out the section titled "𝘌𝘹𝘡𝘳𝘒𝘀𝘡π˜ͺ𝘰𝘯" in Chapter 4 of the toolkit, or CH4 Ep8 of the Spotify playlist!
“Being a bridge builder in the sense that Brown describes takes a toll on the body, mind, and spirit. As the bridge builder, you feel the dissonance that is created when a relationship is unbalanced and extractive, but the nature of your role i
In what ways do the trademarks of settler colonialism show up in the "community ambassador" model? For more on Extraction, check out the section titled "𝘌𝘹𝘡𝘳𝘒𝘀𝘡π˜ͺ𝘰𝘯" in Chapter 4 of the toolkit, or CH4 Ep8 of the Spotify
“The alternative to extractivism is deep reciprocity. It’s respect, it’s relationship, it’s responsibility, and it’s local.” - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done For more on Extraction, check out