ADACI

WHAT: “Healing with the Spirits of Water: Remembering the Ancestors, Honoring the Children”19th Annual Commemoration Dedicated To Restoring Our YouthSpiritual Ceremony… Panel Discussion… Healing Circle… Cultural Celebration…

WHO: African Diaspora Ancestral Commemoration Institute (ADACI) and Melvin Deal’s African HeritageDancers and Drummers

WHEN: Saturday, July 9, 2011 • 11:30am – 5:00pm • Free AdmissionWHERE: African Heritage Dance Center • 1320 Good Hope Road, SE • Washington, DC 20020

The African Diaspora Ancestral Commemoration Institute (ADACI) and Melvin Deal’s African Heritage Centercollaborate to host the 19th Annual Ancestral Commemoration Program emphasizing the ongoing process ofhealing, within African Diaspora Communities, focusing on youth who have departed this life (transitioned)resulting from violence.
This year’s theme, Healing With the Spirits of Water: Remembering the Ancestors, Honoring the Children, will bringawareness to “roadside altars” or “urban veneration shrines” (a term created by Melvin Deal, Artistic Director ofAfrican Heritage Dancers and Drummers) erected by family and friends who have experienced youth violenceand bereavement.

The day begins at 11:30am with opening prayers and libations at the African Heritage Center, followed by aprocession to the Anacostia River at 12:00 Noon led by the African Heritage Drummers. A spiritual ceremony willtake place which includes prayers to the ancestors and will allow attendees to make offerings to the ancestorswhich will be received by the waters of the Anacostia. In accordance with many religious traditions, participantsgenerally wear white clothing to spiritual healing ceremonies, and we humbly request attendees to wear whiteclothing for that purpose. African spiritual traditions associate water as the source of all life manifesting in ex-pressions of health, fertility, cleansing and purification, which is also aligned with the concept of water as a sourceof life and healing in mind, body, and soul found in almost all religious practices. Christian Churches, for example,include the rituals of baptism and sprinkling water over the head; Islam and the Bahá’í Faith both require believersto perform ablutions – washing the body – in pure water before approaching God in prayer, and in many Africanreligious traditions devotees bathe or cleanse for spirit acceptance and to remove offending energy in order tobring forms of prosperity. Immediately following the program at the Anacostia River, participants will processback to the African Heritage Center for a panel discussion on healing and transformation through strengthening and realigning one’s spiritual power.

Panelists include Dr. Kevin Washington – Counseling Psychologist and Percussionist, Mark A. Bolden, Ph.D., –Research Fellow and Therapist, Baba Melvin Deal – Artistic Director, African Heritage Dancers and Drummers, Iya Orisade Awodola – Spiritual Healer within the Yoruba Tradition, and Mama Tendai Johnson – ADACI Director,Yoruba Priest and HBCU Administrator; the panel will focus on race-related stress, intergenerational transmissionof trauma and resilience, coping mechanisms, urban veneration shrines, and post-ongoing traumatic stressdisorder (PTSD). Mama Tendai Johnson and Iya Orisade Awodolo will conduct a healing ceremony incorporatingvarious elements of the ADACI ancestral altar. The day will conclude with a cultural celebration programcelebrating life and healing energy and will feature performances by the youth of the African Heritage Center; poetsLaini Mataka and Aza Zhengha; sound vibrationist and holistic healer, Rev. Ivy Hylton; and the African HeritageDancers & Drummers.

This program is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC with a special invitation to youth-focused community-based organizations as well as families who lost loved ones to violence. Light refreshments will be served.