Winds Laden with Dust: Way-Finding Through Creolized Religious Experiences

There are many hardships that are encountered by members of the Africana diaspora in efforts to remember and reclaim lost ancestral memories. However, the desire to belong to a communal identity located in a particular set of ancestral memories facilitate what Dionne Brand refers to as “way-finding.” In her book A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes on Belonging, Brand argues that religion is one of many methods of way-finding that can be used as a means to navigate the Black experience of a ruptured historical memory resultant from the practice of colonialism and slavery. Using Julie Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust to illustrate Brands notion of way-finding, this body of work contends that diasporic religious practices like Hoodoo, are legitimate methods of way-finding that have resulted in loving and caring connections to one’s lost ancestral past, themselves, and others.