“Women’s Drumming Traditions: Medicine, Magic and Metaphysics”

with Ubaka Hill

Thursday,  September 8, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern Time 

REGISTER HERE

“I was a child during the timeline of MLK and MX, Angela Davis and James Brown and many others who are historically noted and not noted. I was aware of the Civil Rights Movement and the violence and devastation from the organized forces pushing back against change. By the time I was 17, I knew that I wanted to be part of the movement for positive change, equal rights and justice for “my people” because I was afraid and heartbroken and I knew that life had to better for us. I also knew that non-violence was my way of influencing change and that art and creative expression was my medium.

“At 17 I met a woman drummer for the first time: Edwina Lee Tyler, who made a great impression on me. Here was a woman drumming on the Conga Drum and later an African Djembe. I had only ever seen men drumming. Seeing her gave me permission to drum as a girl. By my early 20’s I legally changed my name to Ubaka, and moved to Brooklyn where I “came of age” again, as a Black African American Woman, Lesbian, and artist. It was in Brooklyn where I learned to Drum like a powerful Black Woman with a cause. 

“My life changed when I embraced the fact that all women and girls are targets of systematic, organized patriarchal oppression and violence. I became acutely aware that worldwide oppression is the common drive that powers our collective movement for our human rights. Teaching drumming to women, sharing knowledge about women’s drumming traditions, and using drumming as a healing tool have been the focus of my teaching over the years.”

Ubaka Hill, a nationally recognized musician, drummer, poet, master teacher and healer. Recognizing that as a drummer, she is a consumer of wooden musical instruments made from trees, Ubaka founded the Million Women Drummers Global (MWDG) Initiative. This initiative includes collaborating, partnerships and community organizing to plant trees and play music together to develop a “new mindful model” for a sustainable future and to increase the number of trees in neighborhoods.

She also founded the Drumsong Institute Museum and Archive of Women’s Drumming Traditions of women’s ancient, contemporary folkloric and contemporary drum and percussion traditions. Ubaka is a member of the Advisory Council of the Women’s Leadership Center at Omega Institute, NY. Her recordings include ShapeShifters, Dance the Spiral Dance, and Beyond the Wind. She received Drummer of the Year Award 2002 from The Voices of Africa Choral Ensemble, Inc. In 2005 and 2006, she was given Honorary Citizenship and Proclamation of “Ubaka Hill Day” by the City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She has also received awards for her community work with arts and leadership development.

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

September 22, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Fact-checking Feminism (The Haudenosaunee Influence) ”
Sally Roesch Wagner

October 6, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix ”
Monica Mody

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

 

“Thinking Yours Doesn’t Stink: Dis/Respect for Others”

with Barbara Mann

Thursday,  Aug. 25, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern DaylightTime 

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In Native North American tradition, tales of the Woman Who Married the Bear go back at least to 14,000 BP, but the story shifted with cosmic events, not the least being the comet swarm and strike of 12,900 BP, which brought on the Younger Dryas or Little Ice Age, 12,900 to 11,600 BP. Between megafauna and large, lethal humans with different DNA invading the original peoples of America and a suddenly hostile climate, the tale shifted. After “the stars fell,” it moved from a gentle story of seasonal renewal following movements in star world, to a desperate story of survival in a frozen earth, launching the new murder: hunting. If the old story was a tender romance of protection and continuance, then the revised story was one of protocol violations occasioning frightening new challenges. Throughout, bears are heavy sky-earth potencies that shape-shift into gorgeous human men to woo human women; bear husbands read and create people’s thoughts, far-see, and foretell the future. Bear wives now transform completely into bears, themselves, hunting down the hunters.

This topic is but one of many explored in Barbara’s forthcoming book with co-author Kaarina Kailo, The Woman Who Married the Bear: The Bear Spirituality of Ancient Foremothers.  This work surveys Indigenous traditions across the global north, including North America and Eurasia, stretching back to 15,000 BCE and reaching forward into historical times. The authors trace matriarchal traditions of Women marrying the Bear, with caves as wombs; water as earth’s amniotic fluid; and birth-renewal as the point of thanksgiving connecting “Bear-Women” spirits to elemental forces. The book offers interpretations of this earliest known Bear religion in its original form and in its permutated patriarchal form, when it was reduced to a survivalist hunting relationship. (Watch for a release date in late 2022.)

Barbara Alice Mann, Ph.D., is Professor of Humanities, University of Toledo, Ohio, USA. She is the author of fifteen books including  Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath: Traditional Native American Spirituality (2016) and President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain (2019). For twenty-five years, Barbara was the Speaker and/or Northern Director of the Native American Alliance of Ohio.

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

September 8, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Women’s Drumming Traditions: Medicine, Magic and Metaphysics“
Ubaka Hill

September 22, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Fact-checking Feminism (The Haudenosaunee Influence) ”
Sally Roesch Wagner

October 6, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix ”
Monica Mody

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“Sacred Midwifery: Woman as the First Home”

with Katsi Cook

Thursday,  July 14, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern DaylightTime 

REGISTER HERE

Drawing from Six Nations longhouse traditionalist oral tradition and matrilineal structures, Elder Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook, director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program, will present elements of her visionary perspective on sacredness in birthing– Woman as the First Environment.

“In pregnancy our bodies sustain life. At the breast of the women, the generations are nourished. From the bodies of women flows the relationship of those generations both to society and the natural world. In this way is the earth our mother, the old people said. In this way, we as women are earth.”

The work of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program elevates the lives, dreams, and voices of North American Indigenous women elders who are working to heal, strengthen, and restore the balance of indigenous communities and the world. Fellowship cohorts are connected knowers and co-creators who are empowered to identify their values, inherent purpose, and experiences in self-determined ways for the sustainability of their people and sacred homelands. They are the courageous matriarchs who are deeply engaged with their communities, building solutions from Indigenous knowledge, wisdom, and practice. Using a narrative construction approach that is threaded through sequential cohorts, this orality-capture process mounts a re-membering from which Indigenous women’s knowledge, wisdom, and practice reflects matriarchal consciousness in intergenerational knowledge transfer. 

Katsi Cook is an Elder Mohawk midwife. She is the founding midwife of the Six Nations Birthing Centre where she grounded midwifery education in Iroquoian cosmology. Katsi is also a co-founder of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives where she shares her experiences of the implicate world of birth, dream, and ceremony. As director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program Katsi serves as ambassador to North American Indigenous women’s leadership circles. Spirit Aligned works to strengthen and empower Indigenous women’s knowledge and wisdom networks. In June of 2022 Katsi will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Toronto Metropolitan University, recognizing her “extraordinary contribution to the betterment of culture, society, and the local community.”

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

August 25, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Thinking Yours Doesn’t Stink: Dis/Respect for Others”
Barbara Mann

September 8, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Women’s Drumming Traditions: Medicine, Magic and Metaphysics“
Ubaka Hill

September 22, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Fact-checking Feminism (The Haudenosaunee Influence) “
Sally Roesch Wagner

October 6, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix “
Monica Mody

 

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.