Ifá Heritage Institute: Decolonization Through Satisfying a Desire for Indigenous Yorùbá Curriculum

• In Event: Decomposing Whiteness, Indigenous Soil, Intimacies, and Stolen Childhoods

Abstract

This paper engages in an interdisciplinary discussion of Ifá Heritage Institute–a decolonization project where instruction is delivered in the Yorùbá language and content centers around orally-transmitted Indigenous Knowledge. The Ifá literary corpus reveals new (ancient) ways of knowing and being in the world. This vast literary and divinatory system lives in the Afro-Atlantic world and beyond. There is increasing demand for this Yorùbá Indigenous Knowledge to occupy educational, sacred, and secular spaces as people of diverse backgrounds are becoming scholars and practitioners of Yorùbá religious traditions. This work situates Ifa Heritage Institute and its offshoots squarely within the projects of decolonization and educational, cultural and spiritual resistance.

Author

• Michelle Ajisebo McElwaine Abimbola, Boston College