Watch the recording here!

Join us for a Community Dialogue and Story Session with Lillie Pearl Allen and Delma Jackson III, about liberation: dreamed and realized, internal and structural, for black lives and beyond., Held Juneteenth, June 19, 2020 at 3pm EDT/ 12pm PDT.

For both storytellers, a desire for personal liberation, led to a desire for Black liberation, which led them both to the same conclusion. As Malcolm X asserted,

It’s freedom for everybody or it’s freedom for nobody.

While the whole country yet again grapples with the reality of structural violence against Black people, we offered a space for these two to share their journey and their dream–for us all.

Our July community Zoom featured gina Breedlove, medicine woman, vocalist, composer, & sound healer from Brooklyn, NY. gina is an abolitionist for the lost parts of the self; a grief doula who uses sound and ritual to release stagnant energy, creating opportunity for embodiment and soul retrieval. Together, gina wrote, “we will share the potent and powerful medicine of sound and vibration, moving our awareness and intention for ease through our own bodies, and then sharing this intention with all who gather.” 

gina tours the world with her music she calls folksoul, holding sound healing circles in every city she visits. From Rwanda to the Bay Area, she guides folk into deeper knowing of the power of the human voice, and the inexhaustible presence that is Grace.

gina Breedlove’s Sound Healing is magical, profound, wonderful, and yes, healing

– Alice Walker

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) and Delma Jackson. launched our 2020 Fall Series. Pat, a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker, joined Delma to explore the need, opportunities and barriers to Black/Indigenous solidarity. Watch the recording here!

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Their conversation invoked story, analysis and big-picture questions about efforts to not only strengthen the bonds between these two social categories, but also to explore the implications for solidarity across multiple communities.

Dr. Shadiin Garcia and Dr. Claudia Ford joined our ongoing series of conversations, hosted by Delma Jackson, III, exploring the promises and challenges of justice, solidarity, and community building among Black/Indigenous populations. Together, these two brilliant and powerful women discussed where we’ve been, where we are, and where we might go. Opening with adrienne marie brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell“, they also spoke about strategies for self-care and balance within activism and scholarship. Watch the recording here!

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Shadiin Garcia is Chicana and Laguna Pueblo, and has lived in Oregon for 16 years. She has worked for over 20 years as a teacher, as a public school administrator, researcher, a policy analyst, Indigenous education leader, and as a consultant. Shadiin has a huge extended family including high school and elementary aged children, 59 first cousins, and 19 aunts and uncles.   

Dr. Claudia J. Ford’s career in international management, development, and women’s health spans three decades and all continents. She is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at SUNY-Potsdam in addition to teaching ethnobotany, indigenous knowledge, gender studies, international business, environmental justice, and environmental literature in classrooms and workshops around the globe.

The title of this session comes from Delma’s blog post, Somewhere Between Lenape and Wakanda: Reservations, Reparations, & Afro-Indigenous Futurism. 

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) and Enroue ‘Awo Onigbonna’ Halfkenny, in conversation with Delma Jackson. We rejoined Pat McCabe and welcomed Enroue Halfkenny to our ongoing fall series. In the spirit of Black/Indigenous solidarity, CWC invited participants to practice the power of self care, healing, ceremony, and wholeness with our renowned guest practitioners. Pat and Enroue guided us through a practice for health, calm, and peace in the midst of tumultuous times.

Recording available to the CWC community by request.

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human.

Enroue ‘Awo Onigbonna’ Halfkenny is a Boston born, black, cisgendered male of African, Irish, Swedish, Mi’kmaq and Cherokee descent. He is an Awo (priest of Ifa) within the traditional Yoruba religion from West Africa and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, an artist, a father/son/husband/brother, and a Healing Justice Activist.  Through his consulting, healing and private therapy practice, Healing and Liberation Counseling, he addresses emotional, mental, systemic, and spiritual well being issues for individuals, families, groups, communities and organizations.

Together, these two brilliant and powerful healers guided our community through a series of practices designed to restore our sense of well-being and right relationship to ourselves and one another. In the midst of the 2020 election cycle, we welcomed participants into a space to reground, repurpose, and reimagine our futures together regardless of the election outcome.