“An Ecology of Healing Justice” with Visiting Scholar Ayo Ngozi Drayton

What does it look like to decolonize our healing practices, our medicines, and the ways we relate to the land and one another? What helpful practices, tools and understandings can inform us as healers, practitioners, educators and scholars and help us to replace violent colonial structures and practices with just and generative ones? And what does the natural world have to teach us about the process?

Through lecture, experiential exercises, and small group discussions, this workshop asks and addresses these questions. We’ll take an interdisciplinary approach, looking through the lenses of history, (ethno)botany, archeology, women’s and gender studies, and medicine–but also through non-academic and decolonial practices, through our family stories, personal histories, and case studies.

Participants will leave with new conversations around ways we can decolonize healing spaces and education around healthcare, and ways to reframe our relationships with the land we occupy and steward.

BIO:

Ayo Ngozi Drayton is a community herbalist, historian, and artist committed to documenting traditional herbal practices of the African diaspora and making evidence-based herbal education accessible to all. Ayo writes and edits herbal courses and creates equity-informed projects at the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine in Asheville, NC, is a longtime instructor at Wild Ginger Herbal Center in Maryland and Costa Rica, and is a speaker at conferences, universities, and herbal schools. In her clinical practice, Ayo works with clients of all ages using an approach that integrates scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom to maintain wellness and support common imbalances. Her company, The Creative Root, integrates herbal education, social justice, and creative expression in its content and offerings.

Tuesday, February 4, 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm, Haybarn Theatre

Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Undergraduate Studies Program.