Toshi Sakai and I have been doing field research on manifestations of the Africanity of Panama for more than a decade. A major element of this Africanity is the amazing number and density of African place names throughout the nation. We have visited many of these places. What has...
King Njoya's Palace, Foumban, Cameroon
Congo Queen and Queen Mother, Curundú, Panama City, Panama
Hi, I'm Sheila S Walker, PhD, Cultural Anthropologist & Documentary Filmmaker
As the only African American in my early 1960s elite college class, I needed balance. I found it in Central Africa.
A Little About Me
At a time when presumed experts who studied African Americans as "problems" assured us that we had no culture, and certainly no African heritage, a summer in Cameroon in Central Africa taught me the contrary. I lived in the capital of the Bamum Kingdom with a family proudly aware of their own culture and interested in ours in the United States as well as in those of other communities in what I later learned was the African Diaspora. That initial adolescent experience inspired me to become a cultural anthropologist and to research the Global African Diaspora and its contributions to the world.
The African Diaspora in the Americas
Join me in exploring a myriad of Afrodiasporic cultural manifestations through several decades of my photographic memories. Click on the photos below to see the gallery of images for each country. Then click on each of the smaller thumbnail photos to enlarge them.
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Brazil
Colombia
Curaçao
Peru
Cuba
Suriname
Haiti
Mexico
Brazil 1980
Colombia 1977
Curaçao Tula Rebellion 1996
Peru St Martin de Porres 1994
Cuba 1980
Suriname Ndjuka 1980
Suriname Saramaka 1980
Haiti Citadel 1978
Mexico 1994
Diaspora Discoveries Blog
My process of discovering the Global African Diaspora and its history, cultural traditions and connections.
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Tribute to Dr. Charles H. Long
Without Understanding the Africans in the Atlantic World, You Cannot Have a Clear Understanding of What the Modern World Is ~ Dr. Charles H. Long, Historian of Religions Essay by Dr. Sheila S. Walker The African Diaspora and the Modern World was the title of the 1996 conference I...
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Discovering and Revealing the African Diaspora
Reflecting on the images I selected from my stacks of stills and miles of video to share on this website, I realized that they portray the evolution of my experiences in and research about the Global African Diaspora. They visualize when, where, and how I began, continued, and continue...