Wisdom Wednesday
Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora — A Documentary
*Due to predicted inclement weather, the Wisdom Wednesday event scheduled for February 20th has been RESCHEDULED and will take place on February 27, 2019.
Date: Wednesday,February 27, 2019 from 7pm to 9pm
Location: Thurgood Marshall Center, 1816 12th St NW, Washington, DC 20009
Presenter: Dr. Sheila Walker
Description
“Africa is like Osiris. It has been torn to pieces and scattered over the earth. It is our responsibility to put it back together.” Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Historian, Burkina Faso “Scattered Africa” moves from the violent scattering of African people across the earth to their current participation in a global community. Portraying the overwhelming, if unremunerated, economic contributions of Africans and their descendants to the wealth and power of the Americas, it also highlights elements of African culture that characterize contemporary pan-American life. Emphasizing both similarities and differences, scholars and community leaders—from nations such as Argentina and Uruguay in which the African past and presence is scarcely known, and Surinam and Brazil where African cultural forms are too obvious to deny—discuss their own discoveries of their African heritage, as well as the nature of the scattered transnational community that constitutes the contemporary African Diaspora.
Scattered Africa Trailer from Sheila S Walker on Vimeo.
About the Speaker
Sheila S. Walker, PhD, cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, has done fieldwork, lectured, and participated in cultural events in most of Africa and the Global African Diaspora and has numerous scholarly and popular publications. Executive Director of the non-profit Afrodiaspora, Inc., her goal is to share her experiences and knowledge of known and lesser known peoples and cultures of the Global African Diaspora.