Sankofa Living Memories Series | Recap
During the month of February, Sweet Water Foundation hosted 3 virtual events as part of our Sankofa Living Memories Series. This year, the series welcomed an intergenerational audience to [Re]Member, [Re]Generate, and [Re]Mediate. The three events uplifted the wisdom of elders and ancestors, and demonstrated creative and regenerative ways to share and preserve their memories and practices. Read more about the Sankofa Living Memories Series events.
[Re]Membering | Friday, February 11
On Friday, February 11, Dr. Tolliver Atta (locally known and respected as Mama Afua) shared the importance of [Re]Membering. Her life’s mission is to help people “re-member.” Remember, as in to “recall” and come back into oneness and wholeness.
During the event, Mama Afua shared the story of how she first came to Sweet Water Foundation and the way her experiences at The Commonwealth allow her to [Re]Member. She shared that the more she got involved, the more she saw “parallel moments across time, space, and place.” Mama Afua has since become a regular at The Commonwealth, plugging in on the Community Farm, participating in the Work-Shop, and sharing her knowledge, wisdom, and resources as a member of the SWF Board of Directors. “The experiences I have had on the [Community] Farm made me remember my family and experiences growing up. And all the woodwork at Sweet Water made me remember all the woodwork I saw when I was growing up at home. I remembered my mother and my father.”
During the event, Dr. Tolliver Atta, who is a psychologist, educator, and former faculty at DePaul University, also shared insights on African-Centered Principles and the science of healing.
Mama Afua provided vivid examples of how The Commonwealth provides spaces for healing the mind, body, spirit, and community; a place for [Re]Membering -- coming back into oneness and wholeness.
“In sum, the Africentric paradigm is anchored in the cultural and historical reality of African people. It’s method is derived from polycentered ways of knowing, traditions and practices that recognize fundamental unity of all things in Spirit, felt rhythms and time, and a drive to achieve harmonic balance. It is a socially corrective mission and opposes scholars poised to observe but not to act.”
[Re]Generation | Friday, February 18
On Friday, February 18, SWF was joined by Mama Afua and elders from across the SWF network for a dynamic conversation and cooking demonstration focused on[Re]Generation. A few days prior to the event, SWF delivered bags of produce with mixed greens from the Hoop Houses and red and black beans harvested during the fall to elders so that they could prepare dishes in their own traditions as part of the collective event.
The [Re]Generation event featured live cooking demonstrations that took place simultaneously in [Re]Construction House and Think-Do House at The Commonwealth. SWF Fellows and Apprentices harvested and prepared produce from SWF’s Hoop Houses, with this year’s feature recipe being Sautéed Mixed Greens and Beans. Throughout the demonstrations and after the cooking was complete, Mama Afua and the elders who cooked from home engaged in a rich memory session about methods for cooking greens, eating with the seasons, continuing traditions, and regenerating community through food.
[Re]Mediation | Friday, February 25
On February Friday 25, SWF was joined by more than 30 community members, artists, elders, and youth from across the nation to discuss [Re]Mediation with featured guests, Khary Frazier and Darren Cole, and share Solutionary practices that collectively ‘rehearse our future.’
The session began with Mama Afua and Emmanuel Pratt unpacking the importance, implications, and effects of various forms of 'media' on the health and wellness of our people and community. Their discussion applied the African Centered Principle of “polycentric ways of knowing” to dissect the impact of media and focused on how a turn towards honoring traditions and practices that recognize fundamental unity of all things in Spirit can remediate communities to achieve harmonic balance. They shared the ways and practices of Sweet Water Foundation as an example of how we might ‘rehearse our future’ so that we may collectively write a different story for the generations to come. Examples of how SWF practices remediation through visionary organizing and the reclamation of spaces with Values-Based Partners across Chicago and Detroit were explored.
Khary Frazier, a Detroit native, artist, activist, and entrepreneur, and Darren Cole, a Boston-based artist, digital storyteller, and PhD candidate in Computational Media through the Interactive Media & Game Development Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, shared their journeys as media trailblazers committed to remediation of Black stories. Khary spoke of his work as founder of Creative Differences Marketing and Detroit Is Different, which has not only brought positive and innovative content to a large following across multiple platforms, but also cultivated a community of creatives supported through his leadership. Darren shared how his curiosity and love of technology paved the way for him to live on the cutting edge of the digital world for more than a decade, and how he seeks to share his passion with others as a teaching artist and academic.
After the brief presentation of their collective works, a vibrant dialogue ensued with participants chiming in with questions and reflections on the notion of [re]mediation and the critical importance of imagery, narration, and digital documentation of our collective stories.
