Indigenous Tech Lecture Series Scholarships & All (!) 7 Syllabi from the Pan African Summer School
Are you well-resourced? Is there a Black/indigenous thinker/friend/lover/artist you care for and think would benefit from space to explore the themes in the Indigenous Tech series?
In the spirit of matching an ask with an offering, I wanted to share the links to each of the video syllabi I put together for my Pan-African Summer Series: The School of Submerged Solidarities at the Noname Books HQ/Radical Hood Library. (Below)
The Indigenous Technology Lecture / Open Studio Series is a deep labor of love: the sum of years worth of archival digging, grassroots scholarship, and research trips across Africa & the diaspora. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make the series more accessible – more specifically, how to maximize the amount of free spots I am able to offer to other Black/Indigenous people, while still making room for myself to be compensated for the work that goes into compiling + presenting this research.
I’m very grateful to have had my research practice supported through fellowships and other freelance work the past 18 months, but as I embark on this grassroots MFA journey – not wanting to be beholden to grant applications to fund it, but also wanting to be able to dedicate as much time as possible to deep-study – I’m needing to get creative around how to build an infrastructure of material support. (It’s worth noting that I *am* actively pursuing aligned funding opportunities/applications – if you know of any that might be a good fit, please send them my way!)
With that in mind/that being said, I am *very lovingly* inviting any well-resourced non-Black people (or Black/Indigenous folks who benefit from healthy salaries and are keen to pay it forward) who are reading this to consider gifting a ticket to facilitate someone else’s participation.
I’ve added a ticket option for this gift-registration to the booking page – there is a text box where you can include the name/email of the person you would like the ticket to go towards; but if there’s no one specific you have in mind you can just write “Pay it Forward”.
A lot of folks end up going back to school because that feels like the only way to get the time & space to dedicate to research, but a key motivation of mine with this guerrilla MFA is to prototype blueprints of how to communally sculpt an equivalent to that.
In the spirit of matching an ask with an offering, I wanted to share the links to the YouTube playlists I put together for my Pan-African Summer Series: The School of Submerged Solidarities at the Noname Books HQ/Radical Hood Library.
What do we overlook about Black internationalism? A 7-week series connecting dots across the diaspora through film, music and literature.
The Summer Series' inaugural teach-in centers around Robert Weisbord's 1968 book African Zion which chronicles how land in present-day Kenya was offered to the Zionists by the British in 1906 for settlement of their Israel colony and the reasons that plan fell through. We will also explore the significance of the state of Israel's founding in 1948 coinciding with the beginning of apartheid in South Africa that same year.
With attendees ranging from Audre Lorde and Frantz Fanon to Stevie Wonder and Cheikh Anta Diop, FESTAC'77 in Lagos, Nigeria was a place where artists and revolutionaries converged in ways that sent reverberations across the global Black world for decades to come. Through looking at archival documents and footage, we will explore how understandings around Pan-Africanism on a global scale were formed through festivals like FESTAC, and what the encounters that took place here teach us about solidarity between continents and between disciplines.
Despite the fact that Oceania is home to millions of Afro-indigenous people–from Papua New Guinea to Vanuatu–many people often overlook this region in their discussions about Pan-Africanism. This week will serve as an introduction to the history/ongoing struggles for Black liberation in these islands - beginning with anecdotes of the Melanesian delegations to FESTAC as documented in the research of Professor Quito Swan in Pasifika Black, followed by a screening of and discussion about "Forgotten Bird of Paradise," which documents West Papua's fight for independence.
(No YouTube Syllabus but here are the presentation slides)
How have poets historically used the medium to lay the foundations for resistance and cultural revolution? What price have they had to pay as a result? This week we will be reading passages from poets whose work is rooted in revolution, connecting the dots between the themes in their work, and discussing how art and liberation can and must be meaningfully intertwined.
Brazilian Baile Funk music is beginning to take the world by storm. This week's teach-in looks at the political conditions that led to the birth of the genre – from the relationships that were formed between revolutionaries and gang leaders in prison, to the queer subcultures documented in Daniel Dias' research. We'll begin with a short introduction to the Black Consciousness Movement in Brazil, followed by a listening session.
This week's installation is an ode to all the Black grandmothers who have been doing climate justice work since before it was considered a movement. Reflecting on examples from our own families/communities, we'll explore the various climate initiatives that have been pioneered by Black feminists–from Wangari Maathai (Kenya) to Mari Copeny (Flint, MI).
Octavia Butler's Afropresentism: An Earthseed Gathering
Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower opens up with a journal entry dated July 20th, 2024 – our Present day. The Summer Series' final installation will bring together passages from her prescient Parables – we'll read some of her Earthseed scripture, reflecting on what wisdoms and warnings they offer us in the here-and-now, and discuss the troubling trend of Black feminist pioneers (Butler, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, and countless others) passing away prematurely. We will close the session with a writing activity in respond to The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself: "what are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?"
(No slides, but I recommend reading this piece by
, this study from MIT: “When Being Sick Makes Us Sicker: A Black Feminist Approach to Financial Toxicity” + (re)visiting the Earthseed Verses: “Octavia Butler (1947-2006) was one of the first African-American science fiction writers, and one of the first women to break the science fiction gender barrier. In her Parable series, Butler includes many verses from a fictional book of scripture called “The Books of the Living”. These verses have been collected here and describe the basic theology, ethics, and vision of Earthseed. This collection is called Book of the Living I, to denote it being only the first collection of verses. Butler wrote other verses in preparation of her unfinished Parable of the Trickster and we anticipate that other Shapers of Earthseed with contribute more verses in the future”
I’ll close with two of my favorite Earthseed verses:
The Book of the Living, verse 27: A Gathering of Earthseed
Once or twice
each week
A Gathering of Earthseed
is a good and necessary thing.
It vents emotion, then
quiets the mind.
It focuses attention,
strengthens purpose, and
unifies people.
The Book of the Living, verse 50: Partnership
Partnership is giving, taking,
learning, teaching, offering the
greatest possible benefit while doing
the least possible harm. Partnership
is mutualistic symbiosis. Partnership
is life.
Any entity, any process that
cannot or should not be resisted or
avoided must somehow be
partnered. Partner one another.
Partner diverse communities. Partner
life. Partner any world that is your
home. Partner God. Only in
partnership can we thrive, grow,
Change. Only in partnership can we
live.
Yours in Radical Love,
Neema 🖤
Thank you so much for the generosity in this share 🙏🏽