Mizan Alkebulan-Abakah and her husband, Sizwe Andrews-Abakah, imagine time journey may help heal Black individuals.
Those that go to the couple in Oakland, searching for to determine, alleviate, or perceive racial trauma, should accompany them on an intense, generally painful journey by means of time and area — from historical Africa by means of the Center Passage to America, 3,000 years into the longer term. However the journey isn’t metaphorical and even imaginary.
Vacationers really tread on mud and grit whereas exploring the Motherland of centuries previous, the aroma of eucalyptus lingering within the air. They deal with a ball of cotton plucked from a plantation subject, attend a Black Panthers assembly in an Oakland safehouse, and glimpse a thriving Black group three millennia from now.
The mind-bending, extremely sensory expedition is a part of the Expertise Sankofa Challenge, an interactive workshop Mizan and Sizwe created to advertise racial therapeutic within the San Francisco Bay Space. Mixing historical past with stay efficiency artwork, music, smells, and a post-tour guided dialogue, the undertaking explores how the trauma of slavery and the lengthy shadow of racism places present-day Black psychological misery into context.
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The undertaking “grew out of our work with a company known as Flourish Agenda,” a nonprofit, youth-and-family-oriented group, says Sizwe. At a summer time camp workshop exploring racism, he says, younger individuals have been blindfolded; he and his spouse then guided them by means of an in depth audio journey from slavery to the current day.
The aim, Sizwe says, was to assist the youths perceive the deep-seated, generational wounds white supremacy has inflicted on the Black group, and the way their group remains to be coping with the trauma.
If somebody’s coming with a ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5 — you’re healed!’ program, don’t imagine them.
MIZAN ALKEBULAN-ABAKAH
The workshop, he says, was so efficient he and Sizwe determined to make it part of the Spearitwurx Heart for Tradition and Wellness, their very own community-based nonprofit, coaching, and advocacy group.
“Of us stroll by means of this timeline of our historical past, from the Authentic Lady (in Africa) by means of our greatness (of African civilization), to our enslavement to resistance,” together with slave rebellions, the civil rights motion, and the founding of the Panthers in Oakland, says Mizan. It additionally contains sights, smells, and sounds that match the historic durations for every a part of the exhibit.
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However the focus isn’t solely on Black trauma, Mizan says: Apart from bearing witness to the horrors of the Center Passage and compelled bondage, “you’ll stroll by means of Kemet or Timbuktu, and also you’ll see a scholar finding out. You’ll see George Washington Carver, conducting experiments on vegetation.”
Since creating the expertise as a small artwork set up within the late 2000s, Mizan and Sizwe say 1000’s of individuals have taken the journey with them and, by the top, emerged remodeled. Facilitated discussions, Sizwe says, can evoke sturdy feelings.
When the Expertise Sankofa Challenge got here to Stanford, Mizan recollects an older white man who took the tour made a stunning revelation in the course of the dialogue: his ancestors have been slave ship captains. However as a substitute of shunning or scolding him, she says, different tour-goers thanked him for his braveness and willingness to confront his household’s bitter legacy.
“He mentioned, ‘I’ve by no means as soon as been in a position to see the potential for therapeutic from that have, till he got here to the Expertise Sankofa Challenge,’” she mentioned. “And he’s been a very massive supporter” since then.
“It’s like Mizan typically says: ‘OK, what are you feeling? And what do you wish to do with that feeling?’” Sizwe says. “It’s so easy, nevertheless it’s so profound.”
Sadly, the Expertise Sankofa Challenge had a significant setback earlier this 12 months: heavy spring rains flooded the cultural heart that homes it, forcing them to quickly shut. Within the meantime, the duo have introduced the expertise to pop-up occasions within the Bay Space, and in group conversations on race.
The main focus isn’t solely on Black trauma.
“We satisfaction ourselves on serving to individuals to have interaction in a approach that creates a way of what we prefer to say is ‘vulna-rageous’ — a way of being each susceptible and brave,” he says. “And I believe that’s what ignites inside the individuals after they undergo the expertise.” However they should be keen to endure some discomfort to really heal.
“We at all times prefer to say, if somebody’s coming with a ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5 — you’re healed!’ program, don’t imagine them,” Sizwe says, laughing.
Whereas the couple acknowledges {that a} visceral expertise by means of the previous could set off trauma within the current, they are saying therapeutic can’t occur except the damage is acknowledged. It’s additionally a key motive the expertise ends with Black individuals alive and thriving within the distant future.
At that time, “we’re speaking about company,” he says. “It’s not them doing something to us; it’s us empowering ourselves to create the world that we would like. That risk is the therapeutic within the Expertise Sankofa Challenge. It’s like, ‘We’re nonetheless alive.’”
– Written by Joseph Williams for Phrase In Black
