Spotlight! Symposium: Hess Love

This presentation starts with the origins of Hoodoo during the era of chattel slavery, highlighting its significance as a means of protection, empowerment, and survival for marginalized communities. Hoodoo practitioners integrated botanical medicine, weather observation, more-than-human mythos, and elemental forces into their practices to build livelihoods that honored place-based intangible heritage. Hoodoo was born as a cultural, social, material, and spiritual medicine to adapt to various forms of climate disaster that occurred as a result of colonialism and colonial human trafficking. This talk will center the importance of earth reverence and collective action within Hoodoo, showcasing how shared knowledge and traditions continue to foster resilience and uncover injustices in the face of environmental and social harms.