Service Description

Sankofa is an Akan word in the Twi language meaning, “go back, and reclaim it.” This translation begs two questions: go back where, and reclaim what? To the myriad thinkers, seekers, artists, and activists who have engaged sankofa, it is not back specifically to Southern Ghana from which the Akan peoples originate, nor is it a specific historical period from their origination or height of the ethno-linguistic group’s power and prosperity. “Back” is an idea inspired by that people, place, and time, and “it” means everything that points toward the acquisition and application of not a particular spatio-temporal truth, but to the Truth, with a capital t. Hence, go back to an idea of pre-”African” Alkebu-Lan, and reclaim the Truth. That is Sankofa. The next step is to use what one has reclaimed for the enhancement of their individual consciousness and advancement of their community. That is the intention behind Sankofa Studies… to point us in the direction of what we actually already know but have forgotten. The course facilitates a re-membering necessitated by a collective forgetting. Although you cannot unknow something, you can, however, and for different reasons, including a deliberate, purposeful miseducation program, forget it. Through systematic engagement with Afrikan and Afrikan American historical facts, diverse and representative languages, dialects, and literatures, spiritual systems, social structures, customs and traditions, and art and performance, Sankofa Studies offers the conditions of possibility for students and seekers to access a “place,” “people,” and “time” that triggers a remembering and reawakening so that self- and community-actualization and -liberation can occur. Let us remember so that we can reclaim. Let us reclaim so that we can be and free ourselves. Sankofa Studies. We are Uhuru. All Power 2 the People. Às̩e̩ & Namaste.

Contact Details