Womanist Praxis

Six (6) African American Artists have partnered with the Wisdom Institute and made a commitment to undertake a Womanist Praxis project — Passing the Torch Preserving the Flame (PTPF).  Art will be the modality and the pathway to explore, design, and actualize the praxis itself which is a woman-centered relational organizing model. COVID 19 and the Black Lives Matter movement are the present conditions that make it more favorable than ever to undermine the prevailing denigrating image and value of African American womanhood/girlhood in Detroit.  The Institute’s informal Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) network, 27 women, will be mobilized to heighten identity, build common ground and a synergistic womanist base of activists in order to build a foundation for a gender just Detroit.  Even knowing that the odds are long, over the next three years we will be readying and will be primed for opportunities that we strategically design and create for sustainable cultural and policy change for justice, freedom, and the liberation of African American women and girls’  sacred selves and sacred bodies.

Womanist Network & Lexicon (lexicon bank where folks can enter their own words)

Wisdom Institute’s Womanist Network serves  as “way showers” providing gracious space for the voices of black women new to movement building to be heard as they navigate inclusivity, belonging and methodologies for spirit-centered impact and forward shaping relational organizing initiatives.

With language, change is an inevitable phenomenon.  Womanist lexicon praxis responds to a unique need for new terms to be coined and become embedded in culture, observable locally. Words enter mainstream usage in phases: first by innovation, then through dissemination. Whether or not permanent alteration ensues is dependent upon the relationship to longitudinal, ingrained change.

In the 21st century, the speed at which novel language changes and additions can be virally transmitted and observed is lightning-fast. A time of social and economic disruption, 2020 and 2021 have brought us profuse new framing for words and concepts.  An example of this unconscious embrace is social distancing, arguably one of the most frequently observed and utilized expressions from the past three years; when in fact, a more accurate term might be physical distancing.  Beyond the concept of distancing, could we ever have conceived of “Mask up!”; seeing a sign on the door of the local cafe: “Treat your servers kindly—they came to work today;” “When COVID hit, I was…;” or “Are you boosted?”

WI aims to create dozens of new word meanings from the experiences of African American womanhood and girlhood. Hearing their repetition may induce their passive usage as a comfortable coping mechanism. Want to add words or adages to the lexicon?  Enter them here (link to word bank)

Blogging/writing/essays

text text text

Womanist Biblical Scholars & Theologians voices

Wisdom Institute  has prioritized formalizing and expanding statewide its Black women’s network of healing and integrative health and fitness practitioners, academicians, biblical scholars, supporters in socio-economic-healing justice arenas who are recognized for truth telling, lifting women’s culture, thoughts and beliefs.  Network members serve as  presenters/dialogue facilitators and Ambassadors for programs and issues. If you are interested in joining the network, please complete this form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdV8W_jlQBk0z_cWauMzdYyrtPnlcsjatI7Lu7d3iGrPwzb7w/viewform?usp=sf_link

Woman as Human Beings and A Culture of Belonging

In religiously conservative Detroit’s construct of women’s place and subordination, as practicing comprehensive sex education, art-centered women’s ways, ritual/ceremony, Black womanhood, girlhood celebrated voices and embodied womb-centered consciousness has not been a high priority and considered off the beaten track.   Times change.  Yet, women’s place and subordination have abated only slightly in the public sphere.  WI’s out loud call for women’s ways with grassroot sensibilities, for whole person healing justice at the intersections of water affordability (170,000 water shutoffs); the right to counsel for those being evicted (40,000 a year; 30% African American women) is still an anomaly.