OPEN COMMUNION

WHAT: A Black & Indigenous open mic communion on mortality, ancestry, and affirming our lives, hosted by Sophia Aguiñaga.
WHO: Black & Indigenous attendees/participants only
COST: Free

Drawing on some of our own ancestors’ practices of public and community-held grieving and celebration, we invite you to a virtual open mic communion for Black and Indigenous people.

OPEN COMMUNION IS FOR:

• Witnessing and being witnessed

• Grieving, bereaving, and honoring what we’ve lost and love

• Celebrating the full spectrum of our complex and intersectional lives––from grief to unbridled joy and everything in between.

Whatever you’re carrying, however heavy or light, lay it down. Let the community hold it with you.

WE WELCOME:

• Everything from music to oration, dance to visual art, spoken word to simply talking. Any expression that respects our community agreements.

• You are also welcome to simply witness and rest into the healing of our communion. No sharing required.

WHAT TO EXPECT:

• You’ll receive a sign-up sheet once you’ve registered for the event.

• Each person has 5 minutes, after which they’ll be lovingly reminded of the time cap

• We encourage you to sign up in advance, and will also do our best to hold space for unplanned sharing

We Are Tomorrow’s Ancestors (WATA) is an ongoing series of interactive performances, conversations, and open mic sessions that hold space for Black and Indigenous people to commune on mortality, ancestry, and affirming our lives. As always, free for attendees, supported by the WATA Fund, a reparations fund.

OPEN COMMUNION

WHAT: A Black & Indigenous open mic communion on mortality, ancestry, and affirming our lives, hosted by Sophia Aguiñaga.
WHO: Black & Indigenous attendees/participants only
COST: Free

Drawing on some of our own ancestors’ practices of public and community-held grieving and celebration, we invite you to a virtual open mic communion for Black and Indigenous people.

OPEN COMMUNION IS FOR:

• Witnessing and being witnessed

• Grieving, bereaving, and honoring what we’ve lost and love

• Celebrating the full spectrum of our complex and intersectional lives––from grief to unbridled joy and everything in between.

Whatever you’re carrying, however heavy or light, lay it down. Let the community hold it with you.

WE WELCOME:

• Everything from music to oration, dance to visual art, spoken word to simply talking. Any expression that respects our community agreements.

• You are also welcome to simply witness and rest into the healing of our communion. No sharing required.

WHAT TO EXPECT:

• You’ll receive a sign-up sheet once you’ve registered for the event.

• Each person has 5 minutes, after which they’ll be lovingly reminded of the time cap

• We encourage you to sign up in advance, and will also do our best to hold space for unplanned sharing

We Are Tomorrow’s Ancestors (WATA) is an ongoing series of interactive performances, conversations, and open mic sessions that hold space for Black and Indigenous people to commune on mortality, ancestry, and affirming our lives. As always, free for attendees, supported by the WATA Fund, a reparations fund.

Inaugural Event

Featuring: adrienne maree brown and James Jones
Co-hosted by Sophia Aguiñaga and Angela Hennessy

REMINDER: This event is explicitly committed to serving those who identify as Black and Indigenous and is free for attendees.
If you aren’t part of these communities but are interested in a kindred event, please check out the original You’re Going to Die series!)

ABOUT:

Welcome. I’m Sophia, a Black and Mexican woman who’s, maybe like you, been feeling the immensity of this collective moment. Systemic racism and COVID-19 are converging to threaten our communities. The recent uprisings have acknowledged and validated our fights, yet they have also magnified the brutality of our realities. 

A dedicated communion focused on the experience of Black and Indigenous mortality, honoring our ancestry, and affirming our lives through sharing, celebration, and communion is overdue. Especially when our histories of relentless perseverance in the face of colonization, lost languages, lost land and broken treaties, genocide, slavery, police brutality, suicide, and disease are gaining worldwide acknowledgment and validation for the first time in history. To meet this critical moment, a brilliant team of creators and I are leading the launch of a new, ongoing series.

We Are Tomorrow’s Ancestors (WATA) is an ongoing series of performances, talks, and open mic sessions that hold space for Black and Indigenous people to:

• Explore, share about, and bring visibility to our relationships with our individual and collective mortality and intersectional lives and all its surrounding thoughts, interpretations, and emotions in a safe, closed space;

• Explore, define, and claim what it means, today, for us to be or become ancestors; 

• Transmute grief and our unique histories with mortality into healing, power, creativity, community, and affirmation of our lives; and

• Rest into and build upon the history of solidarity that the Black and Indigenous communities share as freedom fighters and the most direct targets of imperialist white patriarchal capitalism.

Join us for the inaugural event.