Dooo Youuu Know What This Year Is? It's Our Anniversary! Wind & Warrior Turns 10!

Wind & Warrior Institute for Liberatory healing hosts a monthly Community Circle for program alums, Down By The Riverside. In this video you’ll hear a collective meditation on the experience of Flow, interspersed with memory and contemplative practice distilled from our most recent virtual Riverside conversation. Here reflections are shared by W&W program alums in their 80’s, 50’s, and 20’s.

Wind & Warrior began in 2015 and we celebrate a decade of Black Feminist and eco-womanist spirit-warrior-activism this year in 2025! We are humbled that we've been able to cultivate relationships among the Co-Founders for over 30 years, having founded Wind & Warrior after two decades of sisterhood in cultural organizing. Our early years found us creating space for movement leaders to rest, grieve, heal and recharge. We held transformative retreats for change makers and front-line direct action practitioners. We received testimony that our offerings replenished the souls of intersecting movements for liberation. We catalyzed shifts in power sharing practices and relational infrastructure in groups where we co-cultivated change with our collaborators. Folks began to request that we offer more trainings. We began building what would become the Wind & Warrior Institute for Liberatory Healing. Our Inaugural Training Cohort entered in 2024 and has now completed the first half of their 3-year apprenticeship with us; we are most proud of their emergent leadership. Cohort Members are engaged in a comprehensive training curriculum leading to Practitioner Certification in Liberatory Healing Arts.

Mutual Aid for St. Louis on the Strawberry Moon

Our hearts ache for our beloved St. Louis, where so many are still grappling with the devastating aftermath of the tornado that ripped through the heart of the Black community. Homes, vital infrastructure, cherished gathering places, and access to essential food and water resources have been lost, displacing over 20,000 precious souls from their homes and schools. Yet, even in this profound sorrow, we are witnessing the incredible power of love and compassion. The community has risen, neighbor by neighbor, offering steadfast mutual aid and support, illuminating what true solidarity looks like when administrations fall short. Our spirits are lifted by the resilience and profound care emerging from the ground. Please see below for some ways to help this community in need of support: 

image by Brazilian/American photographer Christiana Ceppas

Transformative Love Will Win

WE CONTINUE TO GATHER ANCESTOR WARRIOR POWER….

Our Honored Ancestor Warriors from Central Mississippi

Unita Blackwell (1933-2019) &

Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12

L: Unita Blackwell (1933-2019),SNCC activist; first Black woman mayor in Mississippi; mayor of Mayersville from 1976-2001. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964. R: Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course
Wind & Warrior 8-Week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course

Mindfulness is being alive to the present moment, without judgement. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a practice rooted in both ancient tradition and empirical science. Be supported in community as you practice awareness of your unique embodied experience of each moment. Class meets once weekly on Zoom for 2.5 hours, and we hold a virtual retreat day at the sixth week of the course.

Completion & The Spiral, Beginning Again

We began the Sacred Waters Pilgrimage on the Summer Solstice, on June 20, 2020.

with our kindred from Indigenous Environmental Network at Lake Itasca

On the Seventh Full Moon of our journey down the Mississippi River, we held ceremony to complete our pilgrimage on the Winter Solstice in Louisiana, both in New Orleans and in Plaquemines Parish, where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico.

with extended family, drumming for the Winter Solstice culmination of Sacred Waters Pilgrimage

Reflections at the Headwaters

Reflections 

“The Waters know your intentions.”

                                 -Renee Gurneau

It is early morning on the last day of June, and we’re in the last days at the headwaters. We began this journey with 24 hours of driving across a nation alternately siloed in homes and uprising in the streets, still finalizing the adaptations of the vision of 2019 for the realities of 2020.

We opened the pilgrimage on Juneteenth with a land altar and ceremony on a small shore where the river meets the city under a bridge.

Drums and offerings. Songs and prayer.

Gathering at the river’s edge, and wading in the water.

The previous evening, we were received with grace and storytelling into the home of Renee Gurneau, an Anishinaabe elder and wisdom keeper. We spent hours with her in her home that evening, along with two other women, including her daughter, Simone Senogles, who would join us in ceremony at the headwaters. We talked creation stories, popular music, water songs, family, uprisings, justice, and community. We laughed about the ways of tricksters that walk with us and the great mysteries of cable TV remote controls.

We made offerings, we asked permission.

We left that evening feeling full in many ways. We received permission and an expanded circle of community. Renee and her daughter extended calls to women who are water and wisdom keepers and women learning water ceremony. On the day of the summer solstice, we gathered at the headwaters for ceremony, we exchanged songs and gifts, and later conversation and contact information to stay connected with some who we were just meeting that day.

The Mississippi River begins relatively small. Her waters have a strong song, yet gentle flows here in Minnesota. She gains size and force as the river travels south.

This Sacred Waters Pilgrimage, because of the communities on the journey with us, and those in simultaneous ceremony and virtually community conversations, feels like it is following the same pattern.

Medase (thank you).

Gratitude

As our time at the headwaters draws to a close, we reflect with immense gratitude for the Anishinaabe elders, youth, and women who shared ceremony with us and all the wisdom, knowledge, laughter, and prayers offered; for an unforgettable boat ride to the northernmost point of the river, and for the joy of jumping in the water together. Thank you to the many who are trusting us on the journey of this pilgrimage, the water keepers and local communities along the stops, all who are joining us from home, our Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy partners, and Pilgrimage Circle teams. Thank you to all who are sending offerings and messages with us for the communities where we are traveling and sharing ceremony. Thank you to our families supporting us and holding it down at home during our time away. Thank you to the Ladyslippers, Dragonflies, Eagles, Loons, and Herons who greeted and visited with us over these weeks.

Thank you to the Ancestors and Spirit guides who open the ways for this pilgrimage, who protect and guide us on this journey.

Solstice Prayer - Mercy Carpenter and Desiree Mwalimu-Banks in New York

Solstice Prayer - Mercy Carpenter and Desiree Mwalimu-Banks in New York

We spent the morning in ceremony opening and clearing the pathways and roads. We completed right at the time you all started in MN. Walking out of the water we continued out through the trees with nature.  With plant butterfly and bee relatives affirming us just as they had in our water time.  7 Geese working in collaboration. Waves quieting and crashing passionately against the rocks in tandem with ceremony. Song dance laughter story telling full range of emoting. Reverence and Clarity.