- Winter 2022: Making Labor Work - Organizing for Power in the 21st Century
- Winter 2021: Pandemic Politics - From Lockdown to Liberation (Virtual)
- Fall 2020 with General Baker Institute: Policing Black Power - From Watts to Detroit (Virtual)
- Fall 2020: Healing Justice (Virtual)
- Winter 2020: Detroit 2020 - People, Power, & Politics
- Fall 2019: Healing Justice Workshop Series
- Winter 2019: Whose Safety? Policing Minds, Bodies, and Borders in Detroit
- Fall 2018 Workshop Series: Healing Justice as Building Cultural Resilience
- Winter 2018: From "Two Societies" to a New Society
- Fall 2017: Reclaiming the Commons
- Summer 2017: Beyond '67 - The City-Wide Citizen's Action Committee
- Winter 2017: Toward Education Justice
- Detroiters Speak Archive
- Fall 2023 - Desti-Nations of Hip Hop
Our Healing Justice as Building Cultural Resistance workshop series is back! Last fall, SiD faculty member Diana Seales coordinated 5 workshops for students and community members to learn about, discuss, and practice healing justice. This time, the series is back with some updates and an additional workshop - and is now offered as a mini-course for students from UM-Ann Arbor. Transportation is provided from Ann Arbor. Students can register here.
Community members are encouraged to RSVP for workshops using the Facebook events. If you have any questions about how to do so, you can send us a message on Facebook or email Marion Van Dam at mariongb@umich.edu.
If you are coming from Ann Arbor as a registered student or someone who wants to drop in for one or more workshops, please email Craig Regester (regester@umich.edu) to confirm your transportation.
All workshops are free and open to the public and include a light dinner.
Series information:
Cultural organizing places culture at the center of an organizing strategy. It can be done to unite people through the humanity of culture and the democracy of participation. This series explores the ways in which healing justice, creativity and arts enhance cultural organizing through a series of unique workshops led by Detroiters that are at the forefront of this movement. This type of creative organizing empowers communities to come together in celebration of culture while developing valuable skills that challenge power and oppression.
Healing Justice is woven through each of the workshops. Dr. Page of the Kindred Healing Justice Collective (often attributed with coining the phrase) describes Healing Justice as identifying how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence, and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.”
Additionally, this series is led entirely by indigenous community members and activists. The practice of ritual, which is deeply tied to healing justice and cultural organizing, often comes at the risk of cultural appropriation. As we try to create cross-cultural community healing spaces, it is vital to understand Anishinaabe culture as we stand on their land. This series will struggle with that idea, with the challenge of ritual in the modern era, and will encourage people not familiar with healing justice to get outside their comfort zones and confront the ways in which the destruction of indigenous healing practices and colonization are deeply interconnected.
Workshop Schedule
- October 3rd: Dreams as Empowerment - using dreams for self-healing, transformation, and intuition
Workshop by Zoë Villegas of Gemineye Tarot- Recommended reading:
- October 10th: How to Build Community Through Active Story Sharing and Movement - Dress comfortably and be ready to move: this workshop will include aspects of traditional as well as modern interpretations of Great Lakes Indigenous Dances
Workshop by Christy Giizigad of Aadizookaan - October 17: Herbs & Ceremony - how ritual can be used for personal and activist self-care
Workshop by Adela Nieves Martinez of Healing by Choice!
- November 7th: Using Tarot and Folk Magic as Defense Against Colonialized Structures and Oppression
Workshop by Zoë and Alejandra Villegas of Gemineye Tarot- Recommended Reading: Tarot-reading twins Alejandra and Zoë Villegas give Detroit the reading it needs now
- Recommended Reading: Tarot-reading twins Alejandra and Zoë Villegas give Detroit the reading it needs now
- November 14th: Understanding Anishinaabe Healing Practice to Create Cross-Cultural Community Healing Spaces
Workshop by Chantel Henry of the North American Indian Association of Detroit- Recommended Reading: Ojibwe Teaching - the Four Directions
- Recommended Reading: Ojibwe Teaching - the Four Directions
- November 21st: Beat back the oppressors! Electronic recordings, learning, and sharing. Learn the basics of beat making and ‘chop’ while discussing music and art as a form of resistance.
Workshop by Sacramento Knoxx of Aadizookaan