HEY BABY ~ BIENVENIDOS ~ E KAABO ~ AKWABAA

BYENVENI ~ BEM VINDOS ~ WELCOME

Welcome to the sixth gathering of the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association! ADRSA was conceived during a forum of scholars and scholar-practitioners of African and Diasporic religions I convened at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School in October 2011 and the idea was solidified during the highly successful Sacred Healing and Wholeness in Africa and the Americas symposium held at Harvard in April 2012. Those present at the forum and the symposium agreed that, as with the other fields with which many of us are affiliated, the expansion of the discipline would be aided by the formation of an association that allows researchers to come together to forge relationships, share their work, and contribute to the growing body of scholarship on these rich traditions. We are proud to be the first US-based association dedicated exclusively to the study of African and Diasporic Religions and we look forward to continuing to build our network throughout the country and the world.

Although there has been definite improvement, Indigenous Religions of all varieties are still sorely underrepresented in the academic realms of Religious and Theological Studies. As a scholar-practitioner of such a tradition, I am eager to see that change. As of 2005, there were at least 400 million people practicing Indigenous Religions worldwide, making them the 5th most commonly practiced class of religions. Taken alone, practitioners of African and African Diasporic religions comprise the 8th largest religious grouping in the world, with approximately 100 million practitioners, and the number continues to grow. Despite their noted absence from Religious Studies in the past, more and more, the knowledge embedded in the rich traditions of Africa and the Americas is coming to the fore. The ADRSA is proud to be a part of that development.

African religions have always been dynamic and cosmopolitan, transcending spatial boundaries to blend and reform themselves in conjunction with neighboring traditions. Once introduced into the Americas, the pluralistic nature of these traditions lent to the development of unique African Diasporic religions that have grown, moved, and changed over time. The divination, ritual, song, dance, incantation, craft, festival, spirit possession, dreams, herbalism, acquisition of sacred knowledge and many other aspects of these traditions have traversed the African continent and the world to become formidable forces in the realm of world religions. Practitioners of the traditions represented here today exercise active agency and engage with the world on every level, using every one of their senses and sensibilities. They mend what is broken, balance what is askew and maintain equilibrium until the time comes to mend and rebalance again. This year, with Roots, Rocks & Ring Shouts: A Symposium on African American Spirituality, we center the African American experience and examine the impact African Americans have had on the religious heritage of the diaspora, while also honoring the spiritual connection between all people of African descent on the continent and throughout the Americas. And we are thrilled to do it at a Historically Black College and University, and to do it in the historic, wonderfully African city of New Orleans. We pray that the good feelings and conversations that begin here will continue long after the day is through.

With best wishes and sincere gratitude,

Funlayo E. Wood, PhD

Founding Director, African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association

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FEATURED ARTIST | JEAN-MARCEL ST. JACQUES Great-Grandson of The Quilter & The

Hoodoo Man, Jean-Marcel St. Jacques’ masterful

WOODEN QUILTSTM collection, from which our

cover image is drawn, is the culmination of a 12-

year process of recovery, reconstruction,

reinvention and regeneration. Born in California,

St. Jacques is a self-taught artist with deep

Louisiana Creole roots whose first love is music.

He spent much of his life as a poet and performing

artist until Hurricane Katrina hit and sent him into

a silent meditation from which emerged Jean-

Marcel the visual artist. After Hurricane Katrina,

he began making Wooden Quilts from wood and

objects salvaged from his Katrina-damaged

home in the historic Tremé neighborhood of

New Orleans. In the years following he has

made thousands of Wooden Quilts from small

12x12 squares to 8-foot doors and poto mitan,

and he has shared them with thousands of

collectors from every corner of the globe

primarily through direct sales, without any

gallery representation. Says: “My great-grand

mother made patchwork strip quilts. My great-

grand father was a hoodoo man who collected

junk for a living. As a visual artist, I work

mainly with wood and junk. These wooden

quilts are my way of being with the spirit of my

great grandmother who quilted and my great

grandfather who hoodooed and collected junk.

They are also my way of finding a higher

purpose for the pile of debris hurricane

Katrina left me with. This particular series of

work grew out of an impulse to find beauty in the

ugliness of one of the worst human disasters this

country has ever experienced, and on a more

practical note to save and rehab my house for me

and my family.” For more and to purchase

pieces, visit www.WoodenQuilts.com.

“Portal for Aponte/Door for Black José" 2017. Mixed media

on French Creole double door. With five weapons fabricated

by Odinga Tyehimba in homage to the Abakuá/Leopard

Society. Now on display as a part of the Visionary Aponte

exhibit at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU.

Photo and description by Naiomy Guerrero @naiomyguerrero

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Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) | Friday, April 20, 2018

8:30 am – 9:30 am

Breakfast & Networking

9:30 – 10:00 am

Opening of the Day: Why We Gather

Dr. Funlayo E. Wood

Founding Director, African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association

Libation

Awo Oluwole Ifakunle Adetutu Alagbede

Chief Priest, Ile Omo Ope, New York, NY

Welcome

Dr. Clyde Robertson

Director, Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), SUNO

10:30 am

Morning Keynote | Yeye Luisah Teish

Challenges, Changes, and Triumphs of Orisha Tradition in America:

A Fifty-Year Retrospective

11:15 – 12:15 pm

Panel 1 | (Re)Present: On the Intersections of Artist and Spiritual Practice

Baba Marcus Sangodoyin Akinlana

Co-Owner, Positive Creations & Chief Priest, Ile Eko Asa Yoruba

Ikeoma Divine

Owner, Ikeoma’s Eye and 3rd Eye Lounge

Jean-Marcel St. Jacques

Hoodoo Practitioner, Visual Artist, and creator of WOODEN QUILTSTM

In association with the Center for African and African American Studies at SUNO (CAAAS)

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Nana Sula Janet Evans-Mshakamari aka Sula Spirit

Priestess of Light, and Singer-Songwriter with Spirit of the Orisa

12:15 pm – 1:15 pm

Lunch Break

featuring a screening of Brooklyn to Benin: A Vodou Pilgrimage by Regine Romain

1:30 pm

Afternoon Keynote | Dr. Teresa N. Washington

We Are the Roots, the Rocks, and the Ring Shouts: An Appeal to Action

2:15 pm – 3:15 pm

Panel 2 | Juju Justice: Policing & Black Religion(s)

Dr. Aisha Beliso-de Jesús

Professor of African American Religions, Harvard Divinity School

Dr. N. Fadeke Castor

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Texas A&M University

Sis. Alison McCreary, Esq.

Executive Director, National Police Accountability Project

3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Panel 3 | Wakanda to Where?: Fact, Fiction, and the Way Forward

Iyalode Yeyefini Efunbolade

Director, International Institute of African Studies and Knowledge Inc. (IIASK)

Régine Romain

Artist, Educator, and Founding Director of WaWaWa Diaspora Center

Dr. Anwar Uhuru

Adjunct Professor of African American Studies, NYC College of Technology (CUNY)

Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie

Professor of English, Coppin State University

4:30 pm – 5 pm

Community Conversation & Closing Remarks

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MORNING KEYNOTE | YEYE LUISAH TEISH Yeye Luisah Teish is a teacher, dancer, storyteller, and high

priestess. She also is an author, most notably of Jambalaya: The

Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical

Rituals. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, her father was an

African Methodist Episcopal and her mother was a Catholic, of

Haitian, French, and Choctaw heritage. Yeye Teish is an Iyanifa

and Oshun chief in Yoruba Ifa-Orisa tradition and is one of the

most well-known Yoruba priestesses worldwide. She is

celebrated internationally in Goddess circles as a writer and

ritual-maker. She quite literally a legendary woman of great

character and exceeding positive impact for this generation and

all time. She was the keynote speaker for the very first

Symposium of the ADRSA prior to its founding and we are

honored to share her 70th Birthday with her today! Ore Yeye O!

AFTERNOON KEYNOTE | DR. TERESA N. WASHINGTON Teresa N. Washington, Ph.D., is a writer, activist, academic, and public speaker whose areas of specialization are Africana divinity and spiritual systems, Africana gender and power, and continuity in Africana cultural arts and literature. Dr. Washington is the author of several groundbreaking books: Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Àjé in Africana Literature; The Architects of Existence: Àjé in Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature; and Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence: Divinity in Africana Life, Lyrics, and Literature. Washington is also the editor of The African World in Dialogue: An Appeal to Action! Her work is published in numerous anthologies,

including ÈSÙ: God, Power, and the Imaginative Frontiers; Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas; Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Toni Morrison’s Beloved: New Edition; and Step into a World: An Anthology of Young African-American Writers. Her academic analyses appear in diverse magazines and literary journals, including African American Review, the Journal of American Folklore, the Journal of Pan-African Studies, FEMSPEC, Southern Exposure, and The Literary Griot. Dr. Washington has over two decades of professional teaching experience and has taught at a number of universities, including Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria (where she also earned her Ph.D.); Fisk University (where she obtained her bachelor’s degree); Kent State University; and Grambling State University, where her scholarship and publications earned her the position of the Ann Petry Endowed Professor in English.

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Washington is a global scholar who lived in West Africa over six years. She has undertaken formal and independent research on African continuity in Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Egypt, Morocco, Burkina Faso, Mali, Jamaica, and throughout the southern United States. Dr. Washington enjoys engaging diverse communities at book talks, lectures, radio and television interviews, town hall meetings, and symposia nationally and internationally. She delights in knowledge-sharing with individuals and groups, and recently co-hosted with her daughter a political segment entitled “Nation Time!” on WRFG’s “’What Good is a Song?’: The Friday Night Drum.” Washington’s greatest joy is to be able to spend her life teaching and learning holistically alongside her daughter.

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PANELISTS & SPECIAL GUESTS

Babalawo Oluwole A. Ifakunle Adetutu Alagbede, affectionately known as “the Babalawo of Harlem” is the Chief Priest of Ile Omo Ope Temple in New York City. He is a Traditional African Orisa Practitioner, professional performing artist, father, and master chess player. Awo Ifakunle attended Hunter College, studying community health and physical education and is the student of Professor Ogunwande Abimbola who is the Awise Agbaye (spokesman of all babalawo in the World). His Oluwo (officiator of Ifa ceremonies), and his master teacher is Chief Araba Malumo Ifatukemi Alagbede of Elejibo, Lagos, Nigeria in whose compound Awo Ifakunle was initiated to Obatala and Ifa over 20 years ago. Additionally, the Awo has been tutored by Chief Priest Awise of Osogbo Ifayemi Elebuibon on Ifa divination and chants of Ifa. Locally, Awo Ifakunle was the Godchild and student of both Oba Oseijeman Ofuntola Adefunmi I (iba e), who was the first King of Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina where he lived in for a time in the 1970s. Awo Ifakunle regularly lectures on Ifa-Orisa Tradition at Ile Eko Sango Oshun

Milosa shrine in Trinidad and Tobago, at High Schools in New York City and at Colleges and Universities including Harvard University, New York University, and Sara Lawrence College.

Baba Marcus Sangodoyin Akinlana is a professional artist and Oni Sango (priest – a practitioner of traditional West African culture). Marcus Sangodoyin Akinlana began formally studying Orisa/Vudu, Ifa and traditional African culture in 1989. He had the good fortune to train under and/or work with several enthusiastic awo and olorisa, including Oni Aganju Heriberto Gonzalez, Iyanifa Ifalola Omobola, the late great Babalorisa Sr. Cristobal Cabrera, Babalawo Temitayo, his Ojugbona, the late great Oluwo Chief Adenibi Ajamu and his Babalosa, the Alagba of Ile Ifa Jalumi, Agbongbon Sangodina Ifatunji and family. After receiving several smaller rites, rituals and training during the 1990s, Akinlana was initiated to Sango at Ile Ifa Jalumi of the Oyotunji lineage in 2003. Currently, he is the Baale of Ile Eko Asa Yoruba ni New Orleans. He is assisted by Fatu Omoleye Akinlana in the priestly duties of the Ile. Ile Eko Asa is a training institute and repository of African traditional culture and spirituality based in New Orleans and serving the Deep South and beyond.

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, PhD is Associate Professor of African American Religions at Harvard Divinity School. A cultural and social anthropologist, Dr. Beliso-De Jesús has conducted ethnographic research with Santería practitioners in Cuba and the United States since 2003. Her book, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion (Columbia University Press, 2015) details the transnational experience of Santería, in which racialized and gendered spirits, deities, priests, and religious travelers remake local, national, and political boundaries and actively reconfigure notions of technology and transnationalism. Her publications include articles in American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, and Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is a member of the Cuba Policy Committee at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, an associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and a Ford Foundation Fellow.

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N. Fadeke Castor is Dr. N. Fadeke Castor (U. Chicago, Ph.D.) is a Black Feminist anthropologist and African Diaspora Studies scholar who has taught on Afro-Atlantic religions, popular culture, and social theory at Williams College, Duke University, and Texas A& M University. Fadeke’s research in Trinidad goes back almost twenty years with three continuous years supported by grants from Fulbright-Hays and Wenner-Gren. From this work her first book, Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad (Duke University Press 2017), argues that the Trinidad Ifá/Orisha religion emerges from black power as central to the development of decolonization practices and cultures. Her new project, Black Spirits Matter, focuses on the interplay of the black radical tradition, social justice, and African spirituality as an example of spiritual citizenship in action. She is also an Ifá, Obatala, and Egbe initiate, aka Iyalode Fadeke Orishabunmi Egbefunmilayo.

Ikeoma Divine Ikeoma (I kE Oma) Divine, affectionately known by her peers as “Kiki”, is the owner of Ikeoma’s Eye and 3rd Eye Lounge, based in Charleston, South Carolina. This registered nurse and spirit counselor exhibited mediumship gifts during childhood, but did not begin her astrology studies until 2003. She utilizes tarot, astrology and mediumship as divination tools. Ikeoma’s holistic approach to healing encompasses conventional and alternative methods used to treat the whole person (including physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects) rather than simply managing the signs and symptoms of a diagnosed disease. Through her business, Ikeoma’s Eye, she provides workshops, advice, and insight on love, health, business and guidance to rediscover one’s life purpose. She opens herself up to the community more at 3rd Eye Lounge — a boutique botanica where she hosts community based workshops founded on ancestral practices.

Iyalode Yeyefini Efunbolade is a charismatic woman who has brought joy and meaning to lives of thousands of people. Efunbolade is a spiritual coach, priestess, cultural consultant, author, lecturer, life coach and President of Yeyefini.com/Balanced Living Inc. She was ordained as a Yoruba/Ifa/Lucumi Priest in 1971, teaches and performs rituals and ceremonies in the West African tradition. She organizes and hosts spiritual retreats and pilgrimages throughout the United States, Caribbean, and the world through the International Institute of African Studies and Knowledge (IIASK), which she founded.

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Nana Sula Spirit… Woman of Peace is a Singer, Songwriter, Author, Entrepreneur, Artist, Producer, Birth Doula, Professor and Priestess of Light. She was initiated in Ghana, West Africa as a traditional healer in 2007 and has studied African Spiritual Traditions since 1985. In 2014, Sula Spirit authored and produced the Book & CD Project entitled Spirit of the Orisha – a Yoruba Song preservation project. Sula is currently a Professor of Sacred Music at the Ifa University in Washington, D.C. and is founding Priestess of the Temple of Light Ile de Coin-Coin - a Temple of power for the elevation of souls located in the Musicians Village. Sula holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree with distinguished honors in African Studies and English Literature from Rutgers University in New Jersey (1994). She has traveled extensively throughout Africa and the Caribbean and has been a volunteer with Operation Crossroads Africa participating in community development projects on the

Continent since 1991. In addition Sula is a Medicine Queen with the Mardi Gras Indian tribe Mandingo Warriors – Spirit of Fi-Yi-Yi. Sula is available for Spiritual services, house & business blessings, prayers & elevation. light to all!

Sis. Alison McCrary is a cultural and civil rights attorney, Executive Director of the National Police Accountability Project, a Spiritual Advisor on Louisiana’s death row, and Catholic nun. She formerly served as the Program Director for the Community-Police Mediation at the New Orleans Office of the Independent Police Monitor creating a national model for improving community-police relationships, taught at the New Orleans Police Academy, and helped develop similar programs in cities around the country. She has worked on issues of cultural rights and cultural preservation in New Orleans for more than a decade. As a 2010 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, she challenged and changed policing practices and policies to transform relationships between police officers and the bearers of New Orleans’ indigenous cultural traditions. Sister Alison also worked in the favelas of Brazil documenting the suppression of Afro-Brazilian religious and cultural traditions by the police. Prior to law school, she worked at the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana providing litigation support on death penalty cases and at the United Nations in New York monitoring the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions on women, peace, and security. Nationally, Sister Alison coordinates and provides legal support for social justice movements such as the School of the Americas Watch. She received her J.D. from Loyola University’s College of Law in New Orleans and her B.A. in English at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She also completed coursework at Johannes Gutenburg Universität in Mainz, Germany, University of Surrey in London, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Loyola University Chicago, and Catholic Theological Union.

BOOKS

BY

OUR

SPEAKERS

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and to purchae

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Régine Romain is an artist, educator, Visual Anthropologist, and the Founder and Director of the WAWaWa Diaspora Centre. Régine Romain has 20 years practice in creating, researching, teaching, and supporting diverse communities in engaging and co-creating projects that promote positive representations of their individual and collective identities. Through an extensive global network, Régine produces culturally transformative courses, curricula, workshops, salons, exhibits, festivals, and forums. She is the founder and director of the Urban PhotoPoets, Brooklyn Photo Salon, and the Brooklyn to Benin: A Vodou Pilgrimage projects. Romain’s work is in the permanent collection at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY. Her work has been exhibited at Teatro Nacional de Cuba, Cuba; UN Photography Society, NY; and the Charles Sumner Museum, DC. Her awards include NYSCA Folk Arts 2015 Apprenticeship, A.I.R. Gallery 2011-2012 Fellow, Brooklyn Arts Council Re-Grant, Fund For Teachers Travel Grant, the Trude Lash and Public Allies Fellowships.Régine Romain is a native Washingtonian, now living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her Bachelor of Science in International Studies from Bowie State University and acquired a Masters in Photography & Urban Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Dr. Anwar D. Uhuru, recently received his Ph.D. from St. John’s University in the department of English. His research focuses on the historical and contemporary impact that whiteness has on anti-blackness on the basis of geographical location and political movements. He is particularly interested inhow the concept of blackness signifies not only a group of people that have phenotypical differences in color but also the political, social, ethical, and psychological constructions that define what is black. Currently he teaches at New York City College of Technology-CUNY in the department of Africana Studies. He is also a priest of Ifa and Osun in the Isese Lagba Tradition.

Dr. K. Zauditu-Selassie, known to her students as, Mama Koko, is professor of English in the Humanities Department at Coppin State University. A 2009-2010 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cocody in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, she has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Dissertation fellow, an NEH seminar and institute participant, a National Council for Black Studies fellow at the University of Ghana, Legon, a Fulbright-Hays fellow in Cairo, Egypt, a Fulbright-Hays seminar participant in the Republic of South Africa, a New York University Scholar-In Residence, a Mellon fellow at the Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal, and a Fulbright- Hays Scholar in the Republic of South Africa. Dr. Zauditu-Selassie has lived, studied, lectured, and traveled extensively throughout Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. At Coppin, she teaches, The Politics and Poetics of Hip Hop, Afro-Futurism, and African American Literature. She is the author of, “I Got a Home in Dat Rock: Memory, Orisa, and Yoruba Spiritual Identity in African American Literature” as

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well as several journal articles including, “Step and Fetch It: The Reclamation of African Ontology in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” “Women Who Know Things: African Epistemologies, Ecocriticism,and Female Spiritual Authority in the Novels of Toni Morrison,” and “Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: Using Adinkra Symbols to Frame Critical Agenda in African Diasporic Literature.” She is also the author of a book of critical essays titled, African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison, a 2009 publication of the University Press of Florida, which won the Toni Morrison Society’s 2010 award for the best single-authored book. Her latest publication is a collection of short stories titled, At the End of Daybreak, published by Middle-Passage Press. Her novel, The Second Line, is forthcoming.

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ABOUT THE FOUNDING DIRECTOR Funlayo E. Wood, PhD is a scholar-practitioner of African and

Diasporic Religions, a writer, spiritual life coach, strategist, motivational

speaker, and facilitator. A native New Yorker now residing in Philadelphia,

Funlayo earned the PhD in African and African American Studies and

Religion from Harvard University where her focus was Ifa-Orisa religion and

Africana religious philosophy. Her book in progress, Obi: Death, Divination,

and the Divine Feminine, will produce the first scholarly manuscript

dedicated entirely to the kola nut (obi in Yoruba) and its varied conceptions

and uses among Ifa-Orisa practitioners.

A strong believer in public scholarship, Funlayo is a frequent lecturer and was

featured in the National Geographic Channel's "The Story of God with

Morgan Freeman" (2017) and in the PBS documentary "Sacred Journeys:

Osun-Osogbo" (2013). She has also served as a contributing scholar at State

of Formation and as an expert witness in cases involving practitioners of

Africana religions.

Funlayo is the founding director of the African and Diasporic Religious

Studies Association (ADRSA), a scholarly association dedicated to advancing research in African and Diasporic

religions. She is also the founder of Ase Ire, an inspirational web space where spiritual seekers and those who are

already practitioners are invited to learn, grow, and connect with spirit through online instruction and community-

building.

An initiate of Obatala and Iyanifa, Funlayo relishes in contributing her voice as a scholar-practitioner and an advocate

for indigenous religions. Her research on Africana and other indigenous religions has afforded her the opportunity travel

extensively (a passion of hers) and to study with many gifted spiritual leaders and scholars in North and South America,

Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

THE ADRSA LEADERSHIP COUNCIL

LISA OSUNLETI

BECKLEY-ROBERTS, PHD Assistant Professor of Music and

Chair of the Department of Music

Jackson State University

KHYTIE K. BROWN

PhD Candidate in African and African

American Studies and Religion

Harvard University

KYRAH M. DANIELS, PHD Assistant Professor of Art History and

African & African Diaspora Studies

(courtesy appointment in Theology)

Boston College

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SYMPOSIUM SPONSORS

The African & Diasporic Religious Studies Association (ADRSA) is an interdisciplinary consortium dedicated to supporting scholarship in African and Diasporic Religions. Founded at Harvard University in April 2012, the ADRSA is committed to scholarly and

community exchange with a particular focus on bringing underrepresented voices to the fore.

The Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) at SUNO works to preserve, promote, and protect the

knowledge of Africa and the Diaspora. SUNO, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), is home to the largest

collection of Congo Art in the region.

Since its formation in 1989, The Congo Square Foundation, now known as The Congo Square Preservation Society, has been the major catalyst in the resurrection and continuation of activities, advocacy and preservation of historic and sacred Congo Square. The space has held special significance in New Orleans for more than 200 years and even today, on any given Sunday

at 3pm in the vicinity of Congo Square, the sound of drums still echo and call for people to gather and connect to their ancestral memory, invent new

creative expressions and organize African-American artists and communities

WaWaWa Diaspora Centre's mission is actively heal historic wounds and trauma related to the TransAtlantic Slave Trade through our inter-

generational arts, education, and tours programs.

Our Sacred Stories tells the sacred tales of New Orleans through walking tours of Congo Square and the Saint Louis Cemeteries. Tours conducted by Ms. Denise Augustine, a native of the city with deep Creole roots and even

deeper knowledge.

Ase Ire is an inspirational, informational web space where you can learn, grow, and connect with spirit using African-centered principles and

philosophies. Online courses, community prayer calls, and more!