Omnira Spring into Summer

Omnira Institute’s Wanda Ravernell presents Charlene Eigen-Vazquez with a basket containing a watermelon, dried black-eyed peas, and ‘abamoda,’ known in Spanish as ‘siempre viva,’ all of which were originally cultivated in Africa. Courtesy photo.

Although it’s high summer now, I am still amazed at our spring meeting with Juan and Bernard Gomez of MILPA at the end of April at the Ahimsa Collective Healing Space in Santa Cruz. The two-day retreat, “Carrying Drum,” is a transformative intergenerational Afro and Indigenous gathering designed to promote cross-cultural kinship and share drum teachings and cultural healing. The purpose was to begin creating a spiritual, as opposed to a political, alliance around the drum: the Bata drums of Africa, expressed through the Lucumi tradition of Cuba, and the First Native drum of the Ohlone/Coastanoan nations. After Thursday night’s sweat lodge, led by Charlene Eigen-Vasquez, founder and chairwoman of the Confederation of Ohlone People, on Friday morning, Awon Ohun Omnira shared Oro Egun, the sung litany for the dead to honor Wanda’s uncle, Jack Moore, 93, the first Black man to play on the Warriors’ basketball team. In the afternoon, Eigen-Vasquez was among the members who shared the sound of clapper sticks, explaining that they were the more ancient ‘drum’ of her nation. By Saturday morning, we were so ‘full’ that there was not much more to say as we gathered in a circle for the closing ‘palabra,’ promising to meet again to strengthen the spiritual ties we had made.

To Omnira, this meeting was meaningful, as Eigen-Vasquez and MILPA are committed to land-back initiatives, land preservation, and land restoration, and Omnira has begun this work with its purchase of a few acres on a mountain in Berry Creek, Butte County.