Duckwalk to Freedom
In honor of Juneteenth occurring during June, which is both Pride and Black Music Month, this spoken word piece vogues with sound medicine, vocal improvisation, and a queering of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography title, Long Walk to Freedom. Duckwalk to Freedom invites us to co-imagine the sermons we wish we’d heard growing up. How might we live out these sermons as daily embodiments of the fact of our freedom? How do we rise each day to reclaim belonging as birthright? In what ways do you engage Healing Arts as means to arrive at our most life-giving destinations? As you co-create your own “sermons,” please do share with us @homeplxce using #sermoniwishidheard
[Background Quilt Courtesy of my Granny Jackie]
Watch the Performance
Reflection Questions
- Lakhiyia starts each day with a grounding ritual to “self witness” and “pour onto oneself before diving back into a new day of service.” Do you start your day with any rituals? If so, what are they? If not, what could be a ritual — short or long, simple or intricate — that could be a way for you to fill your cup before being of service to others?
- Lakhiyia shares thought leaders and creatives like Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Maya Angelou and others who serve as sources of inspiration. What elders, ancestors, change-makers and artist do you turn to for soul nourishment and inspiration?
About Lakhiyia
Lakhiyia
Spoken Word Poet
Lakhiyia is the Spoken Word Consultant, a public health cultural shapeshifter, freedom art alchemist, inviting us to remember who we are, call all of our fragmented parts home, and get y/our power back. Lakhiyia holds a Bachelors from Northwestern, Masters from USC, Cornell University Certificate in Womxn’s Entrepreneurship, lecturing years at UCLA, and is currently a Critical Disability Studies Adjunct Instructor in the Portland State University School of Social Work. Pedagogy/Theatre of the Oppressed ground Lakhiyia's feet with deep roots in multidisciplinary means for being the fact of our freedom in a world designed to systematically undermine belonging as birthright. Growing up GenderQueer, Blxck, Queer, and Bible-Belted in the U.S. Midwest, Lakhiyia–who's name means “home” in isiXhosa and Haitian Creole–founded HOMEplxce, an educational and business consulting space committed to Self-determined Intergenerational Wealth Creation as a practice of Economic and Transformative Healing Justice.
Interview with Lakhiyia
How do you practice radical rest and what does that mean for your body, mind, and spirit?
Self-partnership dates. Pause moments in nature. Floating in Mama Wata. Starting each day with a grounding ritual, self-witnessing, and pouring into oneself before diving back into a new day of service. Stillness of radical rest upsets internalized capitalism. I feel unrealistic notions of productivity falling away from me. I am reminded that I get to release the intergenerational trauma of “earning my keep.” I seek to move at the speed of trust–Ancestral and self-trust included.
How do you continue to feed your creative spirit. What are ways you nourish your inner child and artist?
My Lil Khy-self schedules play dates with friends so our inner children can hang out and relearn the art of being. I listen to music by Artists who inspire me and keep my vibrations high–usually while singing and clapping loudly in the car. I travel. I might be a foodie. I improv sing to instrumentals while driving. I love connecting with my creative Ancestors such as Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Dr. Maya Angelou, et al. I write. I make. I approach creativity as a birthing process, giving of myself what may have not been t/here before. My offerings as an educational and business consultant centers Liberation Arts, Liberation Theology, and Liberation Psychology.
What thought leaders, artists, and change makers influence your work and the ways you move in the world?
bell hooks comes to mind immediately. “Education as a praxis of freedom.” Her books, Sisters of the Yam and All About Love, were with me when starting HOMEplxce. We began with a book club in 2013 witnessing bell speak on the power of engaging a love ethic. Our retreats, Healing Vortex events, and consulting spaces are each curated to be “homeplace: a site of resistance.” As someone who moves with chronic pain, I appreciate Mia Mingus’ work on access intimacy and pod mapping. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron had been supportive too, especially towards becoming a disciplined creative. Audre Lorde, the Black Lesbian Mother Warrior Poet who wrote “Erotic as Power,” reminds me to speak. “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.”