Braiding Culturally-Rooted Methodologies: Communal Healing, Freedom Dreaming Circles

• In Event: Rooted in Relations: Tracing Connections Across Women of Color Methodologies to Reimagine Educational Justice

Abstract

As an institution that aims to create more access to higher education, the California Community College (CCC) system supports what is often described as “nontraditional” students, a large proportion of which are Students of Color (Knoell, 1997; Marginson, 2018). Staff and faculty identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) play a significant role in positively impacting students of color, as documented through higher retention rates, degree attainment, student-centered andragogy, and decreased equity gaps (Center for Urban Education, 2017; Cho & Brassfield, 2022; Nwaneri, 2023). Although research demonstrates that BIPOC staff and faculty are crucial to student success, the question remains: who is supporting our BIPOC colleagues?

Channeling Chicana/Latina feminists, Black feminists, and abolitionist scholars, this qualitative study documented and examined the racialized experiences of CCC BIPOC employees in all job classifications. It also centered the voices and experiences of those same employees to reimagine how a CCC could center and affirm BIPOC employees’ thriving, utilizing a distinct method I call “communal healing, freedom dreaming circles".

For generations, Indigenous, Black and Brown communities have been using circles as part of cultural practices to heal, connect, support, and share (Hampton & Mendoza Aviña, 2023; Johnson, 2015; Absolon, 2010; Stevenson, 1999). Circles can be sacred spaces, connected to rituals and ceremonies. They can also be the way for peoples from distinct cultural origins to share stories, wisdoms, and make sense of the world. From the sacred to the everyday, circles can be spaces of conversation where theorizing happens collectively (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015).

In this presentation, I focus specifically on the political necessity of creating “communal healing freedom dreaming circles,” a deliberate braiding of culturally-rooted methodologies (Kimmerer, 2013). Deriving from cultural traditions and practices of sharing everyday experiences as a mechanism for theorizing, Chicana/Latina feminist pláticas are understood as both method and methodology (Flores & Morales, 2021), community spaces to “heal from and resist research approaches rooted in whiteness, colonial logics, and white supremacy” (Morales et al., 2023, p. 3). Similarly rooted in Black feminism to disrupt Western misconceptions of Black women, Sista Circles are “support groups” created by Black women to support Black women in understanding issues from their perspectives (Johnson, 2015). As a Black and Mexican queer woman of color, it felt crucial to center Black feminisms alongside Chicana/Latina feminisms to account for the reality and harm of anti-Blackness that can simultaneously occur in colonized Black and Brown spaces.

Healing circles, a form of resistance within Black struggles and freedom dreaming spaces, therefore allowed me to embrace healing as communal and part of the research practice (Richardson, 2018). While this allowed for the co-creation of brave spaces in each circle, I also reflect on the complexities of this methodological process as people shared stories of racialized harm and their deep physical, emotional, and spiritual impacts. I close with critical considerations for other graduate students whose research is similarly close to their own experiences of racialized violences, and what considerations might be important to guide this deeply personal work.

Author

• LaToya Jackson, Sierra College