Reclaiming Black ecologies of care: Decolonial practices in the Ifá/Òrìṣà community

Abstract

This article examines how African Traditional Religions (ATRs)—particularly the Esín Ibìlĕ tradition of Ifá/Òrìṣà, practiced in a diasporic spiritual community in the U.S., function as a decolonial tool for healing, education, and cultural reclamation. Using a mixed-methods, insider-researcher approach rooted in Indigenous research ethics, twelve self-selected participants shared how ritual, divination, and communal care shaped their healing journeys. Findings show that ATRs offer spiritual and epistemic practices that repair colonial harm, foster ancestral connection, and support holistic well-being. Ifá/Òrìṣà based Spiritual communities can attend to the violence of colonial and historical harm by contextualizing the individual destiny within a collective. A reflexive investigation of the researcher’s dual role as priestess and spiritual leader reflected how positional identities affect rapport, interpretation, and power. Participants highlighted mutual aid, sliding-scale practices, and collective ritual as forms of care, while also naming tensions around cost, gendered roles, and class exclusion. Although rooted in the diaspora, the tradition remains linked to African lineages, reflecting transnational continuity. This study frames ATRs as living, decolonial technologies—spiritual, epistemic, and institutional—capable of building liberator care infrastructures for historically marginalized communities. The work suggests ways in which spiritual communities can offer reparative, culturally rooted resources for the healing of marginalized communities.