BUTCHVoices 2019 Drum Circle

Sunday, August 18th, 2019
4:30pm- 6:00pm
Oakstop – 1721 Broadway
Accessibility info for Oakstop.


A drum circle/workshop presenting work done in Bay Area by Wakan Wiya’s drummers and singers, who have been a part of various drums for several years, including Turtle Women Rising and BAAITS Drums (Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits). An open drum circle will allow for a facilitated healing with all attendants invited to sit at the drum and offer songs, together with the drumkeepers and singers. We will talk through important links between self-care and music/sound, healing, prayers/ intentions, family, ancestors and community. The drummers/singers can share a little about their ongoing work in prayer communities, and organizational work and the ways in which drum circles are used for healing, specifically in the Two Spirit community in the Bay area. As Two Spirit and LGBT identified peoples often experience discrimination and hurtful bigotry, our discussion will address these circles as forms of community healing and restorative justice, and could include brief discussion of these types of gatherings as public opportunities for reconciliation in the culturally familiar
grounds of the tradition. Our discussion could likewise emphasize the ways in which traditional communities have often strictly prescribed ceremonial roles for women separate from men. We will offer experiential examples of supporting those women who work within their communities to return to the drum, where otherwise this is restricted. We are also open to joining another panel as presenters (spirituality? Body/mind/spirit? Self-care?) if preferred, but highly recommend hands on drum circle for participants. It can also be done outside in partially shaded areas, depending on weather.
Wakan Wiya
Wakan Wiya is a Native American drum founded and led by Indigenous Two Spirit women in the Bay Area. Our drum serves our Bay Area Two Spirit women’s communities, their friends, families and allies. We support Two Spirit peoples returning to our Native drum traditions where healing medicine is for all. While we are a public drum, often asked to open ceremonies and events, we understand our drum medicine asprayer and ceremony. Our Wakan Wiya Drum is offered as a LGBT community drum to celebrate, support and help heal through the heartbeat. While our drum circles are smaller gatherings,our drum is available for event opening, blessings, and drumming circles, including circles as workshops where participants can join us on the drum and learn more about this Native cultural form of healing and self-care. Wakan Wiya has been very fortunate to share the drum medicine as part of several Bay Area community events and conferences in the last few years, and we are grateful for their continued support, including: UC Berkeley’s Empowering Women of Color Conference; CSUEB Ethnic Studies classesas a part of the GANAS Program for Latina/o Transfer Students; Indigenous Medicine classes at California Institute for Integral Studies; Roots and Remedies: Social Justice is Health Justice with Praxis Project; ceremonial circles with East Bay herbalist communities, Danza Azteca ceremony circles; and the MALCS conference (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’re also looking forward to a January collaboration in the works with California Prevention and Training Center for the Mind, Body, Soul conference on gay men’s health and wellness.
PRESENTER: M. Zamora, Wakan Wiya Drum
Zamora is a Two Spirit Xicana-Indígena and Yaqui feminist scholar and lecturer at CSU East Bay. She has been a ceremonial singer for many years in a Two Spirit women’s ceremonial prayer community. Through several years of participating in women’s drumming, Zamora has learned from other singers and drummers, sharing prayers, sharing songs and traditions.