As the countdown begins to the 2026 Grenada Ifa Festival, a leading Caribbean-born scholar and poet is amplifying a urgent, resonant call for people of African descent across the Caribbean and diaspora to reclaim their sacred ancestral heritage — one rooted in Indigenous African philosophies and spiritual practices that have survived centuries of colonial erasure.
Liseli A. Fitzpatrick, PhD, a Trinidadian professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, will take the stage as a keynote presenter at the festival’s symposium, hosted by the Shrine of the Seven Wonders of Africa Inc. Scheduled for July 2026, the gathering is already projected to draw hundreds of participants from across the Caribbean region and around the globe, united around the symposium’s core theme: Ancestral Wealth, Inheritance, and Abundance.
For Fitzpatrick, this theme is not just an academic topic — it is the backbone of her life’s work. In an interview ahead of the event, she framed ancestral wealth not in material terms, but as the collective capacity of African people to reconnect with, embody, and grow the sacred wisdom, legacy, and gifts left by their ancestors, forged through centuries of love, intellectual labor, and unthinkable sacrifice.
Fitzpatrick described her upcoming trip to Grenada as more than a professional engagement: it is a spiritual homecoming and act of reverence. “I feel a strong sense of spiritual obligation and oneness,” she explained, noting that the island nation holds immense, multilayered ancestral power — some acknowledged, some still waiting to be uncovered, that carries both weight and blessing for the diaspora.
Fitzpatrick’s scholarly and creative practice is deeply integrated, rooted in African cosmology, ancestral knowledge, and the shared experience of diasporic identity. She argues that the most precious inheritance passed down to modern people of African descent is not material, but the sacred philosophies and communal practices that center self-worth, collective care, and stewardship of the natural world and the continuity of life.
When asked what barriers still block the Caribbean from fully reclaiming these foundational traditions, Fitzpatrick pointed to ongoing reliance on Western political frameworks and the unaddressed intergenerational trauma of chattel slavery and colonialism. “The West was fabricated on and thrives off the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of African peoples, starting with the desecration of our sacred cosmologies,” she said. Western institutional structures, she argues, were intentionally designed to obstruct African self-determination and collective spiritual power, leaving many disconnected from their heritage.
Yet Fitzpatrick remains steadfast in her belief in the resilience of African spiritual identity. Speaking at the 2023 second convening of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, she asserted, “you can shackle the body, but you cannot shackle spirit. The African spirit is unconquerable and ubiquitous.”
To move forward, Fitzpatrick advises regional heritage practitioners to build deeper collaborative networks focused on collective reclamation. She calls for new, emancipatory education initiatives rooted in sensory, community-centered learning that fosters healing and awareness tied to ancestral traditions. Echoing activist and writer Audre Lorde, Fitzpatrick emphasizes that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Western modes of thinking and education, she argues, cannot undo the harm Western colonial systems created — making a return to Indigenous epistemologies non-negotiable.
Central to Fitzpatrick’s work is the blurring of lines between academia and art, which she says are inseparable. “Everything I do is intellectually and intuitively creative — born from the same source with the sole purpose of inspiring life,” she said. “As a Diasporic Trinidadian poet and professor of Africana Studies, there is a natural synergy between who I am and what I do. The two are inseparable.”
Her work centers African cosmology, which she defines as the Indigenous framework African peoples on the continent and across the diaspora developed to make meaning of the world through lived sensory experience. Rooted in ecological balance and interconnectedness, cosmology ties the spiritual and physical realms inextricably together, she explains. “In every sense, I teach what I live and live what I teach, where art is intrinsic. African art is intellectual. Art articulates life. Black art is Black life.”
Fitzpatrick also offers a sharp rebuke of Western definitions of wealth and success, which she calls exploitative, soulless, and rapacious, built on violent consumerism and extractive capitalism. In contrast, she notes, African cosmological perspectives frame abundance as wholeness, collective well-being, and alignment with the equitable natural order of life.
Fitzpatrick’s forthcoming book, *Slavery and the Dis-Ori-entation of the African*, expands on this framework, exploring the deep spiritual and psychological disruption caused by chattel slavery through the lens of Yoruba philosophy. In Yoruba cosmology, *Ori* encompasses both the inner spiritual head (*ori inu*) and outer physical head (*ori ode*) — it is a person’s origin, compass, destiny, and core consciousness. Balance and goodness (*Iwa pele*) is only achieved when inner and outer Ori are aligned. When this alignment is broken by trauma, people lose their sense of purpose, direction, and self.
Fitzpatrick coins the term “Dis-Ori-entation” to describe the widespread misalignment of spiritual and physical identity caused by the violence of slavery and its ongoing colonial legacies. Even so, she stresses that ancestral knowledge was never fully destroyed: “All was not lost or thrown overboard; our ancestors left us a rich inheritance — they found ways to preserve our sacred practices and persevere through their sheer ingenuities, Love, and indomitable spirits.”
To heal this disconnection, Fitzpatrick advocates for what she calls “Re-Ori-entation”: a process of realignment rooted in ancestral knowledge and intentional self-reflection. Drawing on the Akan principle of Sankofa, which encourages communities to return to the past to retrieve wisdom for the future, she explains that this process requires both individual commitment and collective action, rooted in open-mindedness and radical vulnerability.
Oral culture, language, storytelling, and poetry remain central to this work of reclamation, Fitzpatrick argues. When enslaved African people were forbidden from learning to read and write in the colonizer’s language, they turned to their traditional gift of orality, creating new languages, music, movement, and poetic forms that affirmed their humanity and preserved their heritage against all odds. Today, these practices remain critical tools for rebuilding collective consciousness and identity across the African diaspora.
Moving beyond mere survival, Fitzpatrick calls for a full return to foundational ancestral values, rooted in love, wisdom, compassion, reverence, and harmony with nature. This, she says, is the only path to true collective abundance and alignment.
For attendees of the 2026 symposium, Fitzpatrick has a clear message: our ancestors left a legacy of wisdom and sacred practice that we are entrusted to steward, not squander. As organizers prepare for the event, Fitzpatrick’s keynote is already expected to be a defining contribution to the festival’s mission of exploring African heritage, spiritual renewal, and collective empowerment across the diaspora.
