Rooted: Exploring Youth of Color’s Ancestral Archives

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Sunday 1:45 pm
  In Poster Session: Academic Incongruities: Navigating Participatory Authorships within Hierarchical Knowledge

Abstract

This dissertation explores how youth of color engage in healing and activism by drawing on ancestral traditions through a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project. Grounded in Black feminisms, healing justice, and (re)memory, the study examines how Black, Latine, and Indigenous youth understand healing in relation to their visions for social transformation. Through oral histories and community-based research design, the project highlights youth as experts in their own healing and collective liberation. By centering youth-led insight and extra-colonial healing traditions, this study challenges Eurocentric models of mental health and offers design principles for education and community-based research that prioritize relationality, cultural knowledge, and holistic well-being.

Author

• Alexis E. Hunter, University of Colorado - Boulder