“Place, Space, and Identity Formation at Oyotunji Village”
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Authors
Kenja Mccray
Antionette Brown-Waithe
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Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
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Abstract
Occupying a fundamental position at the crossroads of African American religious and political history, Oyotunji Village was the first known Black nationalist settlement developed by American-born Ifá devotees in the United States. Initially part of a larger Black nationalist effort to form an independent country carved from five Southern states, Oyotunji exists, in part, as an “imagined” community, comprised of individuals who perceive themselves as belonging to a group linked by family ties, social connections, similar cultures, shared struggles, and belief in a common history. Starting as a vision, the Village grew into a physical place, endured as a cultural space for Black nationalist identity formation, and has evolved into an Ifa’-based intentional community where African Americans can seek sanctuary from racial discrimination and be relatively free to visit, learn, and live by what the founders determined as their Yoruba ancestors’ values and beliefs. The chapter: covers Oyotunji Village’s ideological foundations in precolonial West Africa and its holdovers in the Black cultures of the American South; delves into stories of Oyotunji’s founders with a focus on patriarch, Oba Oseijeman Adefunmi I; explores the context of its creation in 1970 as well as its subsequent development and legacies; and poses several questions about the Village’s twenty-first century relevance for Ifa’ practitioners.