Genealogies of Healing: Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Stories, Studies and Strategies of Resistance and Transformation

Dear Colleagues, 

In its shape-shifting manifestations across space and time, colonialization has dramatically impacted the lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities for generations. Despite these assaults, BIPOC communities have resisted, transcended, survived, and thrived amidst historical and contemporary colonial violence. Our communities have known tragedy and loss and have tapped into the well of  resources inherited generation after generation. Through creativity, culture, ethics of care, and collective action, BIPOC have leveraged our inherent strengths to heal. Amidst the current collective trauma associated with COVID-19, creative solutions, responses, and demonstrations of healing and transformation are needed. In times when we feel like we cannot get pen to paper, we have the opportunity to tell the stories that will save us, heal us, and extend our lifelines.

We  invite contributions from  a wide array of disciplines including, but not limited to, social work, Native American/Indigenous studies, biomedical sciences, social sciences, history, psychology, public health, cultural, race and ethnic studies, and legal studies. This Special Issue aims to publish original manuscripts that can be conceptual, empirical, methodological, as well as story- or arts-based contributions that respond to research, practice, or pedagogy. For example, we encourage the documentation of successful interventions, stories of inspiration, community-engaged research, ethnographies, and creative approaches to conveying knowledge (e.g., poetic reflections, narratives, origin stories, visual art). Overall, our purpose is to highlight stories, studies, and strategies of healing that emanate from within BIPOC communities as a beacon of light for navigating historical and contemporary traumatic events. We hope to enrich the literature by expanding the canon of what healing knowledge is centered on and by emphasizing how research can be a pathway for historically marginalized voices to produce knowledge that is both “legible” and credible. We invite contributions to this Special Issue which we hope will be a living memorial of hope stories, a survival manual for uncertain times, and a resource for future generations of scholars, educators, activists, practitioners, artists and innovators.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Examples of mutual aid embedded within cultural practices/worldviews/histories.
• Examples of successful community organizing strategies and/or social movements.
• Descriptions of culture-centered health, mental health, educational interventions.
• Regionally specific explorations/strategies .
• Disruptions to what is “legible”/"acceptable” mainstream narrative/knowledge.
• Descriptions of culture-centered approaches to research design that disrupt the problem-focus of research and highlight well-being, innovations, ingenuity, and reinventions/remixes for current times.
• Descriptions and applications of decolonizing approaches to knowledge building that are community-centered.
• Illustrations of the arc between impacts to recovery and impacts to communities who engage and participate in research.
• Reinterpretations/(re)membering of historical narratives

We provide free publication for all authors who submit to this Special Issue.

Dr. Ramona Beltran
Dr. Anna Ortega-Williams
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.