Oakland has a long history of Black radical organizing to promote health in Black communities. From the Black Panther Party’s Free Medical Clinics to the rich legacy of grassroots organizations like the Black Coalition on AIDS and California Prostitutes Education Project, Oakland continues to be fertile ground for Black collective care and liberatory approaches to health. Shout out to the innovative programs of the Freedom Community Clinic, ROOTS community clinic, UMOJA Health, and so many others. It is here that Black people—women, femmes, and gender-expansive individuals—have led efforts to address the intersections of race, gender, and health, creating spaces for healing, liberation, and transformation. This city, with its vibrant cultural and activist communities, provides a space of shared spirit for reimagining the intersection of health, wellness, and social justice.

Dr. Uzo Nwankpa, Keynote Practice

Sacred Exploration of the Elements: A Communal Healing Practice of Breath, Dance, and Play

Dr. Uzo Nwankpa, DNP, MSN-PH, RN, is a 4th-generation descendant of traditional Igbo healers, born in the UK, raised in Nigeria, and educated in the United States. As a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and researcher, she employs performance rituals, storytelling, and experiential installations to harness the transformative power of music, movement, and art in healing trauma. Her work delves into the complexities of Black immigrant identity, personal and communal liberation, and the fusion of ancestral wisdom with contemporary practices.

Dr. Nwankpa earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Nursing, followed by a Doctor of Nursing Practice with a focus on communal healing. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor at Samuel Merritt University’s College of Nursing. Dedicated to addressing bodies traumatized by current and historic violence, she founded the Uzo Method Project, a public health initiative that reimagines healing by integrating ancient practices with modern innovation to restore the mind, body, and spirit of communities. For more information visit www.wellnesspromoters.net

Dr. Symone Johnson, Keynote Talk

Five Considerations for the Healing Artist in Sick Times

This talk will address some of the key areas of concern in practice and scholarship regarding the role of the healer in times of crisis. Framing healing as an art, and healers as artists, illuminates the centrality of skill, intuition, and creative invention in healing and care work that often muddles the boundaries between the material and the invisible, scientific knowledge and situated knowledge. In this keynote, Dr. Symone Johnson considers how we can harness collective power to grow a trans-disciplinary, multilingual, multicultural, multimodal repertoire of care that can confront the violences we face in the belly of the imperial beast.

Dr. Symone A. Johnson (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. An Anthropologist by training, her ethnographic research, based in New York City and Chicago, explores the relationships between eclectic praxes of personal healing, communal care, and the evolution of social change theories like restorative, transformative, and healing justice. She critically examines how people’s racialized, classed, and gendered experiences mediate how they navigate different worlds of care. Her recent work examines the social life of the outdoors and how urban residents navigate the natural and built environment to create their own social infrastructures inside otherwise oppressive landscapes. Dr. Johnson’s public writings can be found in Anthropology News, the American Anthropological Association’s award-winning member magazine. Her latest peer-reviewed work, “We All We Got: Black Urban Ecologies of Care and Mutual Aid”, co-authored with Dr. Ashanté M. Reese (The University of Texas at Austin), is now available open access in the Environment and Society special issue on Global Black Ecologies.

Oral Presentations/Talks

Performances

Roundtables

Visual Art

Sonic / Musical Pieces

Healing / Movement Practices

Workshops

Health and healing, Advocacy, Worldmaking and Futuremaking, Care and Caregiving, Art Therapy, Self-care and Communal care, Spirit and Spirituality, Reproductive Justice, Liberatory Practices, Embodied Trauma, Mental Health, Grief and Mourning, Generational Trauma and Healing, Joy, Rest as Resistance, Political Art, Art and Activism, Healing Arts

The Call for Offerings is now closed. If you would still like to participate, please fill out our participation form.

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