Our Work

All Things Indigenous

WIACT has an educational objective of documenting the wisdom of our elders and assuring its transmission to our children. We honor our elders and want to assure that the knowledge, traditions, languages, history, and culture of African peoples are recovered, restored, and revitalized. They are our precious heritage from our ancestors, who have much to convey to our contemporary age.

Our ancestors transmitted their wisdom and understandings about surviving and living together in unity…through songs, proverbs, poems and stories. Their linguistic legacies encode ancestral knowledge of the nature of existence.

We are in danger of losing our indigenous languages, science, philosophies, and medical treatments… because schools in Africa teach Western philosophies, history and culture, a legacy from colonial times. We must begin teaching indigenous traditions in ours schools, too, or we will become unrecognizable to ourselves within the next generation.

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Sustainable development in Africa begins from what rural people know and have: our culture and traditions; all the creatures, plants and waters that live and flow in our homelands.  In Savannah region, Gonjas and other tribes named the all, but the names are being lost as our elders pass away.  We don’t want to lose them: names reveal natural science handed down through language.

WIACT’s work will assure that indigenous knowledge about natural systems, our languages, and our history pass to future generations.

Returning to Our African Origins

Our Areas of Focus

Route to My Origin
Tours

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Our Savannah region tours can help re-connect the diaspora with their cultural heritage, especially those who have lost their cultural origins due to colonial slave trade.  We welcome all who are interested.

Documenting & Preserving Native Languages

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Language tell us how our ancestors understood the natural world.  Our word etymologies hold natural science about ecologies and relationships in nature.

Indigenous Governance
& Democracy

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Indigenous governance functions through oral tradition and the chieftaincy. Proverbs and songs preserve ancestral wisdom about how to survive, organize community life, and resolve conflicts.

Sharing Food, Festival & Craft

Each year, we organize WariFest, a weeklong festival of indigenous culture in the Savannah region  of Ghana. People come together to enjoy African music & dance, food, games, storytelling, and a market of traditional crafts and fashion.

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Family & Social Life, Economics, and Agriculture

Every person is provided for in African communities. We document the ancestral philosophies underpinning child rearing, economic, social, and agricultural practices.

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Excavating the Truth of Our History

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Through linguistic, archival, archaeological, and humanities research, we can recover the truth of what happened in the past, both before and following contact with European colonials.

Studying Traditional Medicine

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Africa’s traditional healers connect intimately with the natural systems they inhabit. They had ways to understand the health resources available from plants and Nature's processes.

Our Indigenous Religions

Traditional religions derive from spiritual connections with plants, animals, rivers, fire, the cosmos—everything about nature. Elders retain knowledge about proper relationships with Nature and can help us reconnect.

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African Lo-Tech Design

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Our villages are arranged to foster community life.  In our homes, a stranger plate and a stranger bed are always ready. Our building designs protect us from marauding wild animals and/or people.