How are old ways or ancestral traditions being reclaimed by social movements? How has plant knowledge been integral to Black everyday health and healing in North and Latin America? How have these ways of knowing mattered for collective thriving? For the planet? And, how does feeling matter for thriving, teaching, and learning?

Naya Jones, PhD (she/her/ella) comes to these questions as a Black feminist and Blaxicana (Black/Mexican/Xicana) cultural worker, artist-scholar, and educator. Inspired in part by her personal journey with ancestral healing and burnout, she has facilitated meditation, ancestor work, and ceremony with fellow Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), Queer and Trans BIPOC, and social justice organizations for the past 15+ years.

What she practices, she also studies. For academic research, she’s currently studying Black plant knowledge and the Great Migration; she archives Black Mexican/Blaxicana spirituality through ritual arts. Her award-winning solo and collaborative work has been honored by Culture of Health Leaders (the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and the Wisconsin Arts Board (with Ms. Angela Smith), among others.

Originally from Texas, Naya currently lives on the unceded territory of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band on California’s Central Coast. In all things, she is grounded in theory and wisdom from elders; Black, Xicana, and Indigenous feminisms; the healing justice movement; and other traditions that honor earth and ancestors, spirituality and activism.

Naya currently teaches the next generation as an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Above all, ancestors make all possible. Homage. Shout! Exhale.

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Photo by Moriah / Mexico FDS