Decolonizing Medicine
Centuries of colonialism, enslavement, genocide, and imperialism has made Black people, especially those of us who are trans and queer, vulnerable to de-humanizing structures that make “home” contentious places for us. We are a people who are constantly being displaced - from our bodies, our lands, our safe spaces, our communities, our agency, our humanity, and ultimately from our health. This DHM series is a home and a community where Black folks can be in conversation and in movement around liberatory practices of decolonizing ourselves and society. Through dialogues, storytelling, performances, and visual arts, we create a shared space to root ourselves in our ancestry, with the ultimate goal of charting a path of liberation into ourselves and reclaiming our health.
Below are some of the current and past gathering circles within this series.
The Medical (Hx)Story of My Black Trans & Queer Body
A Narrative Gathering of How Black LGBTQ Folks Experience & Create Medicine
May 15 - July 17, 2019; Every Wednesday; 6 - 9 PM
Circle Holder: Ohenewaa
WHO: Black Trans And Queer Folks
WHERE: Seattle
CONTACT: For more info + RSVP form, please email
Black Trans Medicine
Nov 11 - Dec 23, 2018 (Every Other Sunday); 3 - 5 PM
Circle Holder: Déjà Baptiste
WHO: Black Trans and Gender Non-Conforming folks
WHERE: Confidential location in Capitol Hill
CONTACT: For more info + RSVP form, please email
We are Black enough. We are Trans enough. We are Human enough. We are enough.
Inviting the Black Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) community into a space of thriving, story-telling, ancestral re-connections, and medicinal concoctions.
Black Trans & Queer Healing: REST
July 27, 2018; 6 PM
WHO: Black Trans and Queer Folks
WHERE: Confidential location in Capitol Hill (NOT ADA Accessible)
CONTACT: For more info + RSVP form, please email
A free-flow gathering for Black trans and queer folks to rest and root. Bring your words and silences, your gestures and expressions, your personal and material anchors - and simply be.
Re-Birthing Ourselves: Decolonizing The Stories Of Our Bodies
July 12, 2018; 6 P - 8 P
Circle Holder: Linda Chastine; Ohenewaa
WHO: Black Trans and Queer Folks
WHERE: Confidential location in Capitol Hill (ADA Accessible)
CONTACT: For more info + RSVP form, please email
What does it mean to be present in our bodies, and to stay there? In this workshop of the Black LGBTQ Decolonizing Health Series, we will engage in deep personal reflections about the ways our bodies have been forced to disengage from our human experiences in response to colonial trauma, and healing rituals that can guide us on our journeys to reclaim and be at home in our bodies.
Displacement of Black Trans & Queer Folks from Blackness
Jun 14 & 27, 2018; 6 - 8 PM
Circle Holders: Déjà Baptiste; Ohenewaa
WHO: Black Trans and Queer Folks
WHERE: Confidential location in Capitol Hill (ADA Accessible)
CONTACT: For more info + RSVP form, please email
At the last Decolonizing Health workshop ("We Carry Our Ancestry in Our Bodies"), DISPLACEMENT & DISCONNECTION from Blackness were themes that consistently came up. In this following 2-part conversation & healing circle, we will continue unpacking the positionality of Black queer and trans folks in relation to Blackness, how our identities and life experiences inform our (dis)placement, and the agency we have in re-constructing a Blackness that is Afro-queer and Afro-trans humanizing.
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Black Trans & Queer Healing: We Carry Our Ancestry in Our Bodies
May 17, 2018; 6 - 8 P
Circle Holders: Déjà Baptiste; Ohenewaa
WHO: Black Trans and Queer Folks
WHERE: Confidential location in Capitol Hill (ADA Accessible)
CONTACT: For more info + RSVP form, please email
In this first session in the Decolonizing Health & Medicine series, Déjà Baptiste invites the Black queer &/ trans community* into a house of conversation about the indigenous memories our bodies carry. As a people whose ancestry has been violently erased from history - within both white and Black/Afro society - Black LBTQ folks go on extensive journeys into the past in order to affirm ourselves in the present. As we flip through the archives of history looking for reflections of ourselves that will affirm our right to exist, Déjà challenges the Black LGBTQ traveler to also look within ourselves - for our blood and bones carry the origin stories that we seek.