The Guardians of Heritage: An Auto-Afronographic Self-Reflexive Analysis of a Black Studies Intervention

• In Event: Theorizing, Research, and Renewal Within the Black Intellectual Tradition: “How Do It Free Us?”

Abstract

This auto-Afronography reflexively analyzes an educator’s observations and experiences participating in and implementing the Guardians of Heritage (GoH) collaborative, an international African-centered /Black Studies educational intervention focused on facilitating Black youth’s civic agency, critical historical consciousness and leadership in the US and Brazil (Asante & Mazama, 2005; Author, et al., 2022). Using Black/Africana Studies scholarship, historic Black communities “as text” (Blank et al., 2003) and Africana heritage knowledge, this collaborative provided twenty-two young people, their family members, educators and community members in 12 US cities and 3 Black Brazilian communities with knowledge and skills to work together across generations toward place-based social problem-solving and to overcome mis-education, including the coloniality of anti-Black school knowledge. This auto-Afronographic self-reflexive analysis situates the theory, method and impacts of the GoH within the discipline of Black Studies as a deciphering praxis and asks: “What civic leadership and heritage knowledge immersive experiences were co-created/constructed/designed to transform the identity and critical historical consciousness of youth, family, graduate students and educator/community participants?”

Normative Afrocentric theory committed to the “restoration of an African worldview” in research and education praxis informs this paper (Rashid, 2024).

The GoH Collaborative used indigenous African-centered/Africana research methods (McDougal, 2014; Majavu, 2016) to co-investigate researcher/participant observations and experiences implementing Black Studies curriculum and pedagogy, primarily online in the GoH: auto-Afronography, visual methods and document analysis. Auto-Afronography is an African-centered research method that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience to understand cultural experience (Holman Jones, 2005), including biography as a site of memory, from the standpoint of African culture (Baker & Author, 2022).Visual images and media (Banks & Zeitlyn, 2015) were used as digital artifacts and data collection prompts and documents such as Zoom transcripts were analyzed.

Included are the author’s participant observation field notes and auto- Afronographic self-reflexive narrative, youth culturally authentic performance-based self-assessments and youth-produced creative education resources (e.g., mobile apps, elder interview podcasts).

Youth and educators, respectively, gained new skills engaging with culturally-informed teaching and learning using digital technology tools and African-centered teaching and learning standards of academic and cultural excellence. The data indicate youth participants’ growth in self-awareness and positive identification with their African identity, their transformed historical critical consciousness and increased confidence. Youth were socialized through scholarship in the Black Intellectual Tradition using the author’s N3 pedagogical framework (From the Nile to the Niger to the Neighborhood) that does not begin with enslavement. Participants learned to apply the Ideals of Ma’at and the 7 Principles of Kwanzaa as culturally authentic self-assessment academic and cultural excellence criteria standards.

Centuries of structural racism that has displaced and dispossessed Black communities and sustained persistent wealth and well-being inequities, injustice and epistemic nihilation (Author, 2015) have generated the urgent need for African-centered Black youth civic leadership in this historic period of racial reckoning. Likewise, educators involved, including graduate students (who are also teachers) have learned directly from the youth how best to engage them effectively in this transformative heritage knowledge immersion process.

Author

• Joyce E. King, Georgia State University