OUR APPROACH
F R E E D O M L A N D utilizes a transdisciplinary Intersectional Justice approach known as: Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis (AILP)—an ancestrally-rooted equity organizing framework exploring the intersections of LGBTQIA2-S+ Racial, Mixed Ability Justice; unpacking binarism; decolonized embodiment; and transformational movement-building from a Queer Black + Indigenous Feminist and First Peoples’ cultural epistemology. This framework emerges from the deep knowing that just as Black is The Beginning, so too does healing transectional anti-Blackness and Indigeneity uproot interlocking systems of oppression.
Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis grounds Intersectional Justice in the body through ancestral technologies of circle-based facilitation, somatic ritual, socially-engaged artmaking, intergenerational storytelling, and deepening relationship with the land. With a particular focus in Gulf South folk-healing methodologies such as the Ring Shout, this frame carries rhythmic spiritually-exalting medicine from throughout the Afro-Indigenous Diaspora of the Americas, West Africa, Haiti, West Indies, and beyond. Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis offers a unique and necessary approach to anti-oppression theories and practices—bringing the sustainable movement strategies, sacred cosmologies, and radical imagination of Queer/ Trans/ Gender-Nonconforming Communities-of-Color to the Center of collective Freedom werq.
An Intersectional Justice Approach
Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis is rooted in radical movement traditions and theories-of-change led and imagined by lineages of QTGNC2-S+ BIPOC, some of which include:
Intersectionality
Anti-racism
Alternatives to ableism
Healing Justice
Queer Black & Indigenous Feminism
Indigenous Ecology
Afro-Indigenous Futurism
Liberatory praxis & pedagogy
Community altar created for a Liberatory Immersion as part of a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Audit with CounterPulse staff (2019-2020)
Transdisciplinary Decolonized Facilitation
When you participate in a process utilizing Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Praxis, you can expect to experience:
Interactive, participatory processes:
Holistic engagement through culturally-grounded traditions of circle-keeping, storytelling, and collective rituals that heal, cultivate trust, and realign with Center (mission, vision, values)
Arts-based activities:
This looks like graphic mapping, creating vision boards and collages, visually curated and hand-drawn slide presentations, a Freedom Map (an art piece offering a visual representation of the process).
Decolonized structure-building:
Sometimes we practice Theatre of the Oppressed techniques to make visible oppressive practices. Other times we learn from culturally-responsive models of lateral structure-building and collective decision-making. Always we invite the ritual structures of our ancestors to guide the way.
Somatic/ embodied approach:
We ground through Embodied Centering, stabilize our transformation through yoga asanas, we dance it out, body-percuss in rhythm circles to navigate the out-of-sync-ness that is oppression, or literally move into the shape of an emergent idea. Through the body, we dig deep, and have a good time!
Mindfulness techniques:
We connect to radical imagination and our ability to dream liberatory worlds into being through contemplative practices of meditation, visioning, visualizing, and breathwork.