A Growing Archive of Dreams
Here is what is housed in The Ocean Archives, and who houses it; in Love and in Truth.
About the Archives
The Ocean Archives is a sacred undercommons of writings, workshops, courses, resources and technologies created to support us in breaking the boundaries of the colonial imagination. These archives invite us to see ourselves in body, mind, heart, Spirit and lineage—as our own archive of histories, experiences, knowledge and power; wealthy beyond any frame the colonial world can provide us.
In these times, We are beckoned and honored by the Call to Dream into the world new versions of ourselves; new visions of the future that harken back to the common practices and wisdom of all of our Ancestors.
Every dream is not grand. Every piece of the archive is not, either. This archive helps us to move forward in both our ordinariness and our grandeur. The cosmic and the grounded are what are needed now in order to make us steady and keep us open-hearted.
With an open-heart, it is
In this way that we are revolutionary and we sustain revolution.
The Ocean Archives exist and expound in this Spirit. And with you, anything is possible.
May this contribution to our minds, hearts, Spirits inner and outer, and our dreams serve our collective archive of Being for all the days past and those ahead.
About the Founder
Queen Gogo Yemah Takhakhan Jillian Walker, is a Multidimensional Artist & Priestess of Love, Beauty, Possibility & Dreams.
From a heartspace that flows out of The Love of the Ancestors, Gogo incites and inspires sublime new forms of art, structures, and communal systems that break the brutal boundaries of the colonial imagination for our dreams of greater futures to be realized now.
With her spiritual practice as the central portal, she has created and supported over a decade of art in the fields of theater and performance, music, film, television, as well as throughout the academy, in healing spaces, women’s circles, prisons, places of worship, and sacred spaces at and across the oceans.
Queen Gogo Yemah comes from a lineage of teachers, healers and community builders and is rooted in her midwestern US upbringing, her red-dirt southern great-great and 3rd great grandparents, and the ancient ancestors of Southern Africa who called her to initiate and reclaim the medicines and Songs of her people.
She blesses the honor of her lineages through performance and practice. Her most acclaimed work, SKiNFoLK: An American Show (The Bushwick Starr/National Black Theatre: NY Times Critics Pick, Kilroys List, Lilly Award) is published by 53rd State Press. Her other plays and projects have received numerous honors and include Songs of Speculation (JACK, 2020 Third Coast Audio Unbound Award) and Sarah’s Salt.(Winner Columbia@Roundabout, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist, Relentless Award honorable mention).
One of her favorite descriptions of her onstage work comes from Poet and Prophet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who described her Joe’s Pub concert, Blue Ink, as “Transformational, Black feminist, ancestral-portal-opening, love-centered musical work.”
With her multifaceted training and education in traditional academic spaces (BA: The University of Michigan, MFA: Columbia University) and ancient afro-indigenous traditions (Chief teachers, Makhosi Himi Gogo Thule Ngane, Queen Baba Solstice Kha Ekhaya Esima, Makhosi Foundation), Queen Gogo holds a unique combination of intellectual curiosity, spiritual rigor and an incredible capacity for deep listening and collaboration with people, built and natural worlds, time/space, Ancestors and all of the unseen.
Some of her favorite collaborations include: writing/performing and serving as Process Director with The TEAM (Reconstructing), creating Move, Meditate, Make with Libby King, working as a setlist dramaturg on Common’s Let Love tour, serving as dramaturg of divinity on the second season of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness (HBO), holding prompt-based performance classes with the students at The University of Washington and Harvard, holding circle with the women in Nisha Moodley’s Soul of Leadership, and sitting in prayer, song and healing space with her spiritual family at the Makhosi Foundation.
Queen Gogo Yemah is the screenwriter, co-composer and co-star of BLK GRK (or, hiding in plain sight), a multiversal, poetic exploration of the history of Black Greek Letter Organizations.
Her onstage script(ure), The Whitney Album, opened at Soho Rep in New York City in May 2023.
Since her last major stage work, Queen Gogo has been in deep listening and devotion to the composition of the healing technology: AWAKE that makes its home here in The Ocean Archives.
Welcome and thank you for being here.
About the Keeper
Inyosi Sebenzekhaya (Nia O. Witherspoon)
is the daughter of Marcia Ostrow and Anton Witherspoon. Her medicine flows through her as a writer, song channel, womb-tender and bodyworker, dreamer, creative doula, and Kundalini Yoga teacher–a conjuror, a weaver, a shaper, a nurturer, and a creator supporting mental, physical, and spiritual health by way of deep transformation. Ancestrally guided through the Afro-Indigenous teachings of the Ubungoma lineage, and called to be of service since childhood, Inyosi is a deep listener, an empath, and a natural care-giver. A living testimony and devotee of the body, of Mother Earth, and of the Divine Feminine, she continues to heal through the activated remembrance of the inherent perfection and divine cyclical nature in all things in the continued alignment with the frequency of LOVE. She is inspired by her ancestors like “Big Joan” (Hattie Moses) who rowed boats through the swamps of South Carolina in the middle of the night to tend the births in her community, and “Aunt Micey” Oree Witherspoon, who healed the body and spirit with prayer and rain water. In the White Phase, she is stepping into a new level of spiritual responsibility; a deeper level of listening, a higher level of trust, and the graceful flow of submersion into the Sacred Waters to rise up as the Queen Bee that Brings the People Home to the Hive.
Out in the world, she is a published author, professional theatre artist, composer, and writing instructor. She is currently building the foundation to Oshun’s Palace, a full-spectrum menu of ceremonial services for holistic health, birthkeeping, womb-tending, and Ayurvedic + Afro-feminine beauty. Her first book, The Dark Girl Chronicles: A Trilogy will be released in Fall 2025. www.niawitherspoon.com.
About AWAKE
AWAKE is a healing technology + body of work centered on recovering the Soul Self and bringing out the truth of our dreams for our essence's liberation. It is a Portal, a Process, and a Path that takes those who wish to journey into deeper relationship with their sleeping and waking dreamtime experiences as a way to open, rediscover and re-center the creative and spiritual self. The intention of AWAKE is to re-indigenize the mind, rectify the body, and reclaim the spirit from oppression; giving us renewed fortitude to continue transforming the Self inside and alongside the collapse of colonial structures and timelines we are living through Right Now. AWAKE offers a perspective beyond hoping for a better future and one beyond despairing about what is. AWAKE is a space to learn how to be in a waking consciousness with every-thing through what is already present, and emerging, inside of our own being.
Comprised of Twelve ‘gates’ of creative prompts + practices channeled directly from Queen Gogo Yemah's Spirits and Ancestors, and pre-colonial wisdom rooted in archetypal afro-indigenous dream, prayer, and ritual wisdom; AWAKE is a year-long energetic commitment for those who are called to rise into higher relationship to themselves, their Ancestral lineages, and their creativity and imagination, as they dream to transform the waking world.
The Twelve Gates of AWAKE
Gate I | The Body
Gate II | The Spirit
Gate III | The Inner Child
Gate IV | The Water
Gate V | The House
Gate VI | The Practice
Gate VII | The Shape
Gate VIII | The Soul & The Not-Self
Gate IX | The Cosmic Ancestors
Gate X | Past Lives and Karmic Relationships
Gate XI | The Tree
Gate XII | Technology + Communication
For a mini-dive into the world of AWAKE, sign up for a free trial of the 'Revolutionize the Archive' tier here in The Ocean Archives.
