2024 Program:
Families and Parents
Thursday November 21
This session examines the intersections of the American legal, economic, and religious institutions of racialized rape (arranged and aimed primarily against Black women, girls, boys, and in some cases men), pedophilia, human sex trafficking, and enslavement. This experiential and interactive course content, delivered in an explicit and provocative fashion, examines the ways in which pedophilia and rape were infused into White legal, moral, political, economic, and governmental systems, and highlights the emergence of Black rage and anger as the result of White terror. One focal point is amplifying and elevating anti-Blackness as the underlying principle for these institutions and operations, rather than focusing on enslaved Black persons – as free Black persons, free Indians (as they were referred to in laws) were terrorized in many ways that are defined within the same contexts.
This session explores the teaching and reinforcing of Whiteness and anti-Blackness to White, Indigenous, and Black people, and others, during this period and beyond. It also explores the ways in which White solidarity and White benefits (mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) indoctrinated, enabled, and incentivized White people to normalize complicity in anti-Black terror and subjugation. This session examines deeply the premise of anti-Blackness/anti-Black racism as psychopathic and sociopathic.
Native Americans are often invisible in our public discussion of America and even more so in any discussion of Muslims in the United States. As a group, Native Americans broadly make up 1.8% of the US general population. As such, they are often overlooked, invisible, and underrepresented in public conversations and decision-making. Muslims, the most ethnically diverse faith community in the nation, broadly make up an estimated 1.1% of the US general population. Among Muslims in the United States, Native Americans make up just 1-2%.
Native American and Indigenous Muslim Stories: Reclaiming the Narrative (NAIMS), the first comprehensive study of its kind, is centered around spreading awareness of the lived experiences of Native American and Indigenous Muslims in the United States. It includes the first-ever photo narrative project to center the lived experiences of Native American and Indigenous Muslims in the United States. We explored identity, ways to navigate multiple marginalized communities, and intersectionality.
The complexity and richness of such identities, like being Native, Black, and Muslim in the US, will take the audiences to a conversation beyond race and racism 101. Religion, ethnicity, race, belonging, and creating a society that fits all of us will be the center of this conversation. By centering their voices and images, this form of storytelling opens up the possibilities of new ways of understanding, disrupts dominant narratives about Native American and Indigenous Muslims, and helps audiences contemplate broader themes of identity and what it means to be an American today.
This workshop will demonstrate how descendants of enslaved Afrobobe people have reclaimed their heritage by reconnecting to their roots in one of the smallest countries in Africa named Equatorial Guinea. It is the only Spanish speaking country in Africa. A map will be laid out as the presenter steps through the events that removed Africans from their island and forced to five particular countries across the world. Despite language barriers, descendants within the diaspora have reconnected with family and their native villages in addition those who remain spread across other lands that became home.
Although small in size, the Afrobobe people have proven time and time again that they are mighty in power by building resilience despite the many ways and forms that white supremacy and colonization attempts to carry out centuries old plans, efforts and narratives designed to wipe out the Afrobobo Tribe, ancestral memories, spiritual values and its language off planet earth. Tools and projects created by diasporans to preserve their culture and how it inspires and ignites unity amongst their society and tribe will be shared. Resisting the plan for “No Return” is a wild dream come true – our collective unity is making a powerful story and changing the narrative!
Afrobobe descendants is a living and breathing intergenerational framework that keeps the rites of passage and dream alive in enriching, empowering and sustainable ways through film, magazines, podcast, poetry, art and fashion. We are the wild dream come true, sho'nuff for our ancestors!
A kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors reflecting colored glass pieces, with the angle of the mirrors shaping what we see. Drawing inspiration from Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, who transforms images from magazines that fail to represent her culture into powerful art that creates presence from absence, this workshop invites you to create a collage that addresses and challenges your own sense of invisibility. Together, we’ll explore how to assert visibility, take control of your place in media narratives, and dismantle imposed hierarchies to make room for your authentic story. Join us in this creative journey to discover how you can commit to being seen and redefine the space you occupy in the world.
Friday November 22
What is home? A deeper exploration than where we are simply "from," this session invites participants to make connections between home, homeland, and belonging. In spaces never meant for us, how do we reclaim our feeling of home as a memory or a place? Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal and Christopher Tse will utilize small group work and storytelling to facilitate questions like: “Is home something we are creating or something we left behind?” “Is home safety, struggle, or both?” and “Can any of us truly be home on stolen land?”
The BIPOC experience of home has always been and continues to be informed by systemic violence and the demands of the empire. For those of us born into colonial projects with darker skin and coarser hair, we’ve checked the box as "Other" within the USA or Canada. Our mother tongues will always be too foreign, our food too pungent, our ambition too overzealous. Every child of a non-white diaspora knows what it feels like to have their ethnicity perpetually prefixed to their nationality; it is a permanent hyphen.
In a time of mass displacement and forced migration from conflict, capitalism, and climate crisis, these conversations are only more urgent. This session is for everyone who has struggled to find their place in the hyphen, for those longing for home, and for those committed to reimagining home for themselves.