Sankofa as Praxis: Ontological Healing,Memory,and Decolonial Return

Abstract

This paper theorizes Sankofa—the Akan principle of “return and retrieve”—as a decolonial praxis of ontological healing, memory, and African radical insurgence. Writing from a Ghanaian diasporic standpoint shaped by the crossings, frictions, and possibilities of U.S. academic life, I recount racial and ontological harms across my academic trajectory and examine how practices of Sankofa became literacies of healing. These literate acts include (a) traveling back to Ghana as a transnational re-education on Blackness, (b) witnessing African Americans’ somatic and sartorial rituals of healing at historic slave sites, (c) engaging Indigenous knowledge through encounters in a chief’s palace, and (d) enacting everyday literacies of cultural pride—such as wearing Ghanaian clothing—as somatic and symbolic resistance. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Sankofa, and Global Black Rhetorics, I advance an interpretive heuristic in which Sankofa narrativization functions as a method, and the burdens of my racialized memories become the archive through which I theorize harm and healing. This work contributes to qualitative inquiry and Global Black Rhetorics by positioning African epistemologies not as mere cultural repositories but as methodological heuristics that expand how we understand healing, literacy, and decolonial research practice.

Keywords

Sankofa decolonial methodology Global Black Rhetorics (GBR)literacy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adjei

P. B.

(2018). Adinkra symbolism of Ghana. African traditional oral literature and visual cultures as pedagogical tools in diverse classroom contexts. IAP.

Ahmed

Gyamerah

(2025). Sankofa: Towards African-centred research methodological framework. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 28(14), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2025.2564127

Amaadi

(2023). Paper title: Comparing the influence the instructional methods of faculty in Ghana and the US have on students’ learning experiences in higher education: An auto-ethnographic study Master’s Thesis. Ohio University.

Anderson

López

(2018). Key facts about black immigrants in the U.S. Pew Research Centre. https://www.pewresearch.org/

Animashaun

Bell

(2023). An encounter with the divine: Extraordinary literacies of Black girls and women in endarkened third spaces. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(7), 1228–1247. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2203136

Anzaldúa

(1987). How to tame a wild tongue. In In the Latinx philosophy reader (pp. 341–349). Routledge.

Asante

Archibald

(2023). Beyond Ubuntu: Nnoboa and Sankofa as decolonizing and indigenous evaluation epistemic foundations from Ghana. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 19(44), 156–165. https://doi.org/10.56645/jmde.v19i44.789

Atay

(2024). Critical reflexivity through autoethnography: Interculturality and in-between experiences. In The Routledge handbook of critical interculturality in communication and education (pp. 293–307). Routledge.

Baker-Bell

(2017). For Loretta: A Black woman literacy scholar’s journey to prioritizing self-preservation and Black feminist–womanist storytelling. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(4), 526–543. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X17733092

10.

Baker-Bell

(2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge.

11.

Balogun

O. M.

(2011). No necessary trade-off: Context, life course, and social networks in the identity formation of second-generation Nigerians in the U.S. Ethnicities, 11(4), 436–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796811415759

12.

Bell

(1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. Basic Books.

13.

Berenstain

(2016). Epistemic exploitation. Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 3(20201214), 569–590. https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0003.022

14.

Bernal

D. D.

(2002). Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 105–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800107

15.

Bonilla-Silva

(2018). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

16.

Boutte

Johnson

G. L.

Wynter-Hoyte

Uyoata

U. E.

(2017). Using African Diaspora literacy to heal and restore the souls of young Black children. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal, 6(1), 66–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296x20967393

17.

Boylorn

R. M.

(2013). Sweetwater: Black women and narratives of resilience. Peter Lang.

18.

Brooks

Cueto

(2018). Contemplating and extending the scholarship on children’s and young adult literature. Journal of Literacy Research, 50(1), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X18754394

19.

Browdy

Milu

(2022). Global Black Rhetorics: A new framework for engaging African and Afro-diasporic rhetorical traditions. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 52(3), 219–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2022.2077624

20.

Chawla

(2021). The stories that I wrote/the I that stories wrote Doctoral dissertation. Durham University.

21.

Chilisa

(2019). Indigenous research methodologies. Sage Publications.

22.

Coles

J. A.

Powell

(2020). A BlackCrit analysis on Black urban youth and suspension disproportionality as anti-black symbolic violence. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(1), 113–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1631778

23.

Datta

(2018). Decolonizing both researcher and research and its effectiveness in Indigenous research. Research Ethics, 14(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016117733296

24.

Davalos

Jadue

Ibarra

M. P.

(2024). The decolonial offerings of collaborative autoethnography with the Nahui Ollin. Río bravo. A Journal of the Borderlands, 25(1), 39–53. https://doi.org/10.51734/fv30am08

25.

Dei

G. J. S.

(2012). “Suahunu,” the trialectic space. Journal of Black Studies, 43(8), 823–846. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934712463065

26.

Dei

G. J. S.

(2020). Elders’ cultural knowledges and African indigeneity. In In the Palgrave handbook of African education and Indigenous knowledge (pp. 279–301). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38277-3_14

27.

De Walt

P. S.

(2011). In search of an authentic African American and/or Black identity: Perspectives of first-generation U.S.-born Africans attending a predominantly white institution. Journal of Black Studies, 42(3), 479–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934710378748

28.

Dillard

C. B.

(2012). Learning to (re)member the things we’ve learned to forget: Endarkened feminisms, spirituality, and the sacred nature of research and teaching. Peter Lang.

29.

Dogbe

(2003). Unraveled yarns: Dress, consumption, and women’s bodies in Ghanaian culture. Fashion Theory, 7(3-4), 377–395. https://doi.org/10.2752/13627040377805196

30.

Fanon

(1952). Black skin, white masks. C. L. Markmann, Trans. Grove Press.

31.

Flanagan

J. C.

(1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51(4), 327–358. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0061470

32.

Gyamerah

(2025). Rethinking the potential role of African Indigenous knowledge systems in transforming STEM education. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2025.2553599

33.

Harrell

S. P.

Malebranche

D. A.

(2025). Reclamation and emancipation in mindfulness and nature-based contemplative practice: A Sankofa-informed autoethnography. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 95(3), 330–347. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000860

34.

Harris

C. I.

(1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341787

35.

Hickson

J. M.

Paul

R. J.

Perkins

A. C.

Anderson

C. R.

Pittman

D. M.

(2022). Sankofa: A testimony of the restorative power of Black activism in the self-care practices of Black activists. Journal of Black Psychology, 48(3-4), 448–474. https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984211015572

36.

Hooks

(1997). Homeplace: A site of resistance. In Undoing place? A geographical reader (p. 3338). Routledge.

37.

Iddrisu

M. S.

(2024). African Americans in Ghana: Enacting literate acts of healing from epistemic and ontological harm. Community Literacy Journal, 18(1), 3.

38.

Institute of International Education . (2024). Open doors report on international educational exchange. https://opendoorsdata.org/

39.

Johnson

L. L.

(2017). The racial hauntings of one Black Male professor and the disturbance of the self(ves): Self-actualization and racial storytelling as pedagogical practices. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(4), 476–502. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X17733779

40.

King

J. E.

(2006). “If justice is our objective”: Diaspora literacy, heritage knowledge, and the praxis of critical studying for human freedom. Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 108(14), 337–360. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146810610801418

41.

Kissi

S. B.

Fening

P. A.

Asante

E. A.

(2019). The philosophy of Adinkra symbols in Asante textiles, jewellery and other art forms. Journal of Asian Scientific Research, 9(4), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.2.2019.94.29.39

42.

Korankye

E. N.

(2021). An autoethnographic study of my student and teacher experiences in first-year composition (FYC) in Ghana: (re) developing more inclusive pedagogies in FYC in the U.S Master’s thesis. Illinois State University.

43.

Kubota

(2019). Confronting epistemological racism, decolonizing scholarly knowledge: Race and gender in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 41(5), 712–732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2022.100946

44.

Kubota

(2022). Decolonizing second language writing: Possibilities and challenges. Journal of Second Language Writing, 58(100946), 100946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2022.100946

45.

Kumi-Yeboah

Smith

(2017). Cross-cultural educational experiences and academic achievement of Ghanaian immigrant youth in urban public schools. Education and Urban Society, 49(4), 434–455. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124516643764

46.

Ladson-Billings

(Ed.), (2003). Critical race theory perspectives on the social studies: The profession, policies, and curriculum. IAP.

47.

Ladson-Billings

Tate

W. F.

(1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 97(1), 47–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146819509700104

48.

Leonardo

(2009). Race, whiteness, and education. Routledge.

49.

Lippi-Green

(2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Routledge.

50.

Liu

W. M.

Liu

R. Z.

Shin

R. Q.

(2023). Understanding systemic racism: Anti-Blackness, white supremacy, racial capitalism, and the re/creation of white space and time. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 70(3), 244–257. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000605

51.

Love

(2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.

52.

Mamdani

(2016). Between the public intellectual and the scholar: Decolonization and some post-independence initiatives in African higher education. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 17(1), 68–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2016.1140260

53.

Milu

(2022). Toward a decolonial translingual pedagogy for Black immigrant students. In Racing translingualism in composition: Toward a race-conscious translingualism (Vol. 123). Colorado University Press. https://doi.org/10.7330/9781646422104-008

54.

Ndlovu‐Gatsheni

S. J.

(2015). Decoloniality as the future of Africa. History Compass, 13(10), 485–496. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12264

55.

Nisa-Waller

Piercy

(2024). Autoethnography as a decolonising tool: Bringing identity into the classroom. Higher Education Research & Development, 43(5), 1142–1155. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2024.2307924

56.

Ogbu

(1991). Immigrant and involuntary minorities in comparative perspective. In Ogbu

Gibson

(Eds.), A comparative study of immigrant and involuntary minorities (pp. 3–33). Garland.

57.

Osei-Tutu

A. A.

(2023). Developing African oral traditional storytelling as a framework for studying with African peoples. Qualitative Research, 23(6), 1497–1514. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941221082263

58.

Patel

(2015). Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. Routledge.

59.

Rosa

Flores

(2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621–647. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000562

60.

Saboro

(2016). The burden of memory: Oral and material evidence of human kidnapping for enslavement and resistance strategies among the Bulsa and Kasena of Ghana. Journal of Pan African Studies, 9(4), 111–130. https://jpanafrican.org/docs/vol9no4/JuneJuly-8

61.

Smith

(2023). Black immigrant literacies: Intersections of race, language, and culture in the classroom. Teachers College Press.

62.

Solórzano

D. G.

Yosso

T. J.

(2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103

63.

Souto-Manning

(2021). On the abolition of belonging as property: Toward justice for immigrant children of color. Urban Education, 59(1), 5–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859211017967

64.

Taylor

Gillborn

Ladson-Billings

(2009). Foundations of critical race theory in education. In Taylor

Gillborn

Ladson-Billings

(Eds.), Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp. 1–11). Routledge.

65.

Temple

C. N.

(2010). The emergence of Sankofa practice in the United States: A modern history. Journal of Black Studies, 41(1), 127–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934709332464

66.

Tripp

L. S.

(2021). American miseducation: Myths, distortions, and illusions (Ethnic and Women's Studies Working Papers, No. 10). California State University.

67.

Wa Thiong’o

(1986). The writer in a neocolonial state. The Black Scholar, 17(4), 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.1986.11414415

68.

Walcott

(2014). The problem of the human: Black ontologies and ‘the coloniality of our being. In Postcoloniality-decoloniality-black critique: Joints and fissures (pp. 93–105). University of Chicago Press.

69.

Watson

V. W.

Knight-Manuel

M. G.

(2017). Challenging popularized narratives of immigrant youth from West Africa: Examining social processes of navigating identities and engaging civically. Review of Research in Education, 41(1), 279–310. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X16689047

70.

Wynter

(2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—an argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015